Transcription

Chris
So, Jeff, if I were to tempt you with something unhealthy to eat food wise after we record this podcast. Yeah. What’s the number one food that would tempt you the most? Ooh.

Jeff
Uh, I don’t know. Uh, right now, a good burger and fries. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris
It’s a temptation because it’s probably not the healthiest.

Jeff
It’s not healthy. No, of course not. All the good stuff. None of the good stuff’s healthy.

Chris
Yeah, well, today we’re talking about how Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness.

Jeff
Oh, well, if you’re going to try to tempt me, I think I’m supposed to tell you something like. Man shall not live by French fries alone. Is that what I’m supposed to say?

Chris
Yeah, let’s go with that.

Jeff
We’ll get to that. He’s Chris and I’m Jeff, and we’re the Bible guys. Maybe man should not live by French fries alone. But I’d like to try.

Chris
I’d like to try. So we all know that the Babylon Bee is one of the best sources of news.

Jeff
Absolutely. It’s as reliable as almost all the rest of the news sources out there.

Chris
That’s right. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So it’s total satire. Yeah, yeah. And we love reading them, by the way. They’re so funny. It’s it’s actually one of my favorite segments. Oh, I love it I love it if you, if you read it.

Jeff
Okay. So, uh, this one today, the headline it’s so great is jerk of you or jerk in front of you going the speed limit. Right. What a jerk. And so yeah, what a jerk. This this this news reports out of Boise, Idaho. It says a new report confirmed by multiple sources indicates the guy driving in front of you has the absolute nerve to drive the legal speed limit on the one lane freeway you’re driving on. What a jerk.

Chris
What a jerk.

Jeff
You’re supposed to go 5 to 10mph over the limit. Everyone knows this, said one eyewitness, who also found himself stuck behind the thoughtless creep going 65mph like an utter weirdo. This guy obviously either didn’t get the memo or he’s literally never driven a car before. Jerk.

Chris
Jerk.

Jeff
Though exceeding the posted speed limit is legally wrong. All sensible Americans have agreed to an unspoken rule that speed limits are more like guidelines. Nobody drives the speed limit, continued the witness. You either drive below the speed limit, in which case you’re a grandpa who doesn’t belong on the road, or you go way too fast, in which case you’re an impatient moron who has no regard for the safety of others but drive the speed limit. Only major jerks do that. The jerk driving the speed limit in front of you could not be reached for comment, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is, as suspected, a jerk. Every reasonable person drives faster than the speed limit, the eyewitness concluded. It’s just like insurance fraud. Is it technically illegal? Yes, but everyone does it anyway, right? No. Why are you looking at me like that? Oh, that’s at publishing time. An investigation was ongoing to determine if the jerk driving the speed limit in front of you was actually a dangerous psychopath, or just merely a jerk.

Chris
Um, you know, I lived in Atlanta for ten years. Yeah. And, uh, the Atlanta Freeway in some cases has, like, eight lanes. Oh, yeah. Just on one, just on the north going north. Right. I mean, it is just incredibly wide. Right. And, uh, for some reason, the big thing in Atlanta is that it’s labeled still at 55 miles an hour.

Jeff
Wow.

Chris

55. I mean, name another place in the country I don’t know. Right. Like that is still at 55.

Jeff
No, that’s got to be like in, uh, Communist China.

Chris
Yeah now, now, I haven’t lived in there like, I haven’t lived there since like for 20 years. So it could be completely changed by now. But when I was there for ten years, uh, that’s what it was. Wow. And so, um, well, here’s what’s interesting is I saw a news report on the news where they were interviewing a police officer. Right. And he was the guy sitting there with the radar gun on I-75 right through downtown Atlanta. And he made this comment publicly. And I kid you not, this is a real thing. He said, oh, I don’t stop anybody who, uh, isn’t going at least 100 miles an hour. What he goes because he said, I, um, he said if I stop somebody going like 70, he goes, I know that three seconds later there’ll be somebody going 100. He said, so I want to catch the ones with the biggest fines. So he said, if I see somebody going 80, he goes, if I wait about five more seconds, I can get somebody going, 100. Wow, wow. So which of course told everybody in Atlanta.

Jeff
Note to self.

Chris
Note to self, you’re allowed to go 80 or 90, right?

Chris
And I thought to myself that is crazy that he said that publicly.

Jeff
Yeah I wonder what happened. I bet he got yanked into the office that week.

Chris
Well, I bet you he did.

Jeff
Yeah. Well, so we have, uh, an expressway here in our area where we live, just outside of Detroit in the northern suburbs. And, uh, there’s a freeway that, uh, 696 that you get out in the middle of 696. And just to keep up with the flow, you got to be doing about 80. Yeah, right. You’re going to get bulldozed if you’re not. I mean, that’s just flow. You’re not passing anybody at 80. You’re just keeping up with everybody at 80 miles an hour. And it’s like one of the reasons is, uh, it’s kind of it’s a lower freeway. So the walls are really high. There’s really nowhere to pull anybody over. So there’s not a lot of you don’t see a lot of police action on that freeway, just cleaning up messes. That’s what they do. The freeway gets shut down every day because there’s another accident. And, uh, they clean up the messes, but there’s not anywhere really to pull over somebody very often. And so there’s not a lot of that. And. Yeah, it’s crazy. Crazy. Uh, I well, I cannot be overly critical on that because I tend to be.

Chris
The faster pastor.

Jeff
I’m the faster pastor. Yeah. So lead foot.

Jeff
Well, hey. Uh, we are, so I appreciated that one. Thank you, Desiree, for finding this important news. She’s like our our deep dive investigative reporter. She finds those things. So, uh, we’re reading now about, uh, Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. And this is a fascinating idea that Jesus gets tempted by Satan, this direct encounter. And this happens immediately after Jesus baptism. So it shows up in three of the four gospels. So as we look at the parallels, Matthew, Mark and Luke include these. Mark again only has like two sentences. Uh, Matthew and Luke tell the story, but we’re going to we’re going to pass on Matthew. There’s 1 or 2 differences and I’ll highlight those. But let’s just pick up with Mark. Mark chapter one, uh, verses 12 and 13 and.

Chris
He two sentences, two verses.

Jeff
I know that’s what I’m saying. He says the spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. That was it.

Chris
Broad strokes. That was it.

Chris
Yeah. If you want to know what happened, that’s the general summary.

Jeff
He got tempted. Angels, angels were there.

Jeff
Uh, but then in Luke chapter four, he says, Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil. For 40 days. Jesus ate nothing at all during that time became very hungry. Then the devil said to him, if you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread. But Jesus told him, no. The scriptures say, people do not live by bread alone. Then the devil took him up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world. In a moment of time I’ll give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them. The devil said, because they are mine to give to anyone I please, I will give it all to you if you’ll worship me. And Jesus replied, the scriptures say, you must worship the Lord your God and serve only him. Then the devil took him to Jerusalem to the highest point of the temple and said, if you’re the Son of God, jump off, for the scriptures say, he will order his angels to protect and guard you, and they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone. Jesus responded, the scriptures also say, you must not test the Lord your God. When the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came. What an amazing, uh, encounter.

Chris
Yeah. And, uh, and one of the things that we were quick to discuss is that a lot of people think that Jesus was only tempted three times. Yeah, yeah, in the wilderness. Because these are the three temptations that are recorded. Um, but it says in verse number 13, clearly, when the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came. Yeah. Now know this that the that the both accounts say that Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days. Right. And it said that he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. Yeah. So, you know, I’m not sure how long these temptations take, but my guess is these three instances did not last 40 days. Right, right, right.

Jeff
These are summaries of the kinds of temptations. Yeah. I think it’s just like John later on, will, uh, John ends his book saying, if we wrote all the miracles that Jesus did, I don’t know if the world could contain the books. Right. That’s that’s how he ends his book. So when we read Mark or we read Luke, we read John telling the miracles of Jesus. They’re summaries of, okay, he did this miracle and healed many other people. How often does it say that? Or he did this miracle, he healed blind, this blind guy. And then there were all these other people that need to heal for the rest of the day.

Chris
And he spent he spent this much time doing signs and wonders and miracles, and it just sort of summarizes it in broad strokes.

Jeff
I think this was 40 days of extreme spiritual struggle. And it just happens that these three kind of summarize the big, big idea. But it does go on. It does end saying here. So this one ends with saying the devil left Jesus until the next opportunity came the note in, uh, the Life Application Study Bible says Christ defeated the devil in the wilderness was decisive, but not final. Throughout his ministry, Jesus would confront Satan in many forms. Too often we see see temptation as once and for all, and in reality we need to be constantly on guard against the devil’s ongoing attacks. Well, where are you most susceptible to temptation right now? How are you preparing to withstand it? You know, I had a friend. Uh, well, we both did. We had a friend that we loved dearly, uh, that had great victory over his addictions.

Chris
Yeah.

Jeff
And for for quite a bit of time.

Chris
Yeah Donnie.

Jeff
And, uh, told, uh, you know, God used him to, uh, help other people come out of addiction and all these struggles. And then in a moment of weakness, he had a temporary relapse and lost his life in that, in that temporary relapse. And, uh, so temptation is an ongoing thing. Just because you won yesterday doesn’t mean that automatically guarantees you’re going to win today. You have to be vigilant against the day. That’s why Paul tells us in Ephesians, keep every day put on the armor of God, right? Get up. Put on God’s armor every day because it’s a perpetual battle. Satan is always prowling around, seeking whom he may devour. So, uh, I love the fact that Luke included that idea that it wasn’t just three temptations and out. Oh, because it would be easy for me to say Jesus only had to go 40 days and then never had to deal with it again. Right. And that’s just it’s easy for him, right? Right, right. But that’s not what happened. He he had this continual just like we do ongoing encounter with temptation. And that that makes Jesus even more, uh, impactful to me, I think.

Chris
And by the way, the insight of, you know, every time I’ve heard a sermon preached on this, uh, the main highlight is, is that Jesus rebutted the temptation with the words of God. Yeah, right. So, you know, using the word of God, knowing the scripture, memorizing the scripture. But I but I also love the fact that, uh, Satan then, uh, seemed to catch on after the second one in these three that are listed. And he so Satan decides to use the word of God as the temptation. Right, right. So the third temptation, he says, uh, you know, hey, doesn’t the scripture say he will, uh, order his angels to guard and protect you? So jump off and then and that’s when Jesus comes back and says, well, the scriptures also say, right. In other words, that’s a whole nother sermon in itself. Yes. You know, in other words, like God’s words will not contradict themselves, right, right, right. So you can’t take one without considering the other. Right? So there’s like three sermons right here.

Jeff
Well, there’s a fourth one. Uh, James. So I want to tie it all together, isn’t it, James who says that the sins are the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life? Is that James or Peter?

Chris
First John.

Jeff
First John, first John. Okay. Yeah. So missed them both. First John. Good thing we had we have an actual Bible guy here, right?

Chris
Right, right.

Jeff
Yeah. So the lust of the flesh. Uh, hey, turn these these stones to bread. You’re fasting right now, and, dude, wouldn’t you feel good if you just did that? Uh, that’s common to all of us. We all have lusts of the flesh. It might not be the food in the moment. It could be sex, or it could be, you know, something else. Lust of the eyes. He takes him and he says, hey, I’m going to give you everything you want, right? This is that kind of that greed, that self-centeredness. And the third one was the pride of life is, listen, if you bow down to me when when you jump, I mean rather that was you jump off. Everybody’s going to.

Chris
Right, right, right.

Jeff
And so look, everybody will recognize you then. So these are the three temptations. So Jesus only weapon, the only weapon that he used against the devil was the word of God. But the devil decides, okay, I’m going to quote scripture too. So what the devil did is the devil quoted a principle. He will order his angels to protect and guard you. And Jesus quoted a law. Write a command. You must not test the Lord your God. So we should never take principles and try to build some kind of argument that overrides commands. God’s commands, God’s commands take precedent over any biblical principle.

Chris
There is the fourth sermon in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn’t that something that’s really good? Jeff
So for the Bible students, the kind of person who comes and listens to a daily podcast about daily devotions, this is this is how do you sort it out? If there’s a you must not just trust me. There’s no principle that overrides the you must not.

Chris
Right?

Jeff
Right. So when you when you hear you must or you must not, thou shalt not guess what you even if some slick preacher or you can do. Hey, we had a guy on our staff one time that went and found some justifications for behavior he wanted in his life online, but the justifications. So there’s always somebody the internet’s big enough. Now you can go find justification for anything you want to justify somebody, some weirdo is going to agree with you, but they’re always going to take some obscure principle and try to twist the obscure principle to override a command of God. There’s never a time. So do I think principles are useful? Yeah, we use principles to teach all the time. But, dude, they should never contradict a command from God.

Chris
Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris
And, uh, and how Jesus then is tempted to do something legitimate in an illegitimate way. Yes. So so think about this. So, you know, oftentimes, you know, the thing that, you know, uh, Satan was tempting him wasn’t even necessarily bad. Yeah. It was just the manner in which he, you know, he’s going to do it before his time. Yeah, he’s going to do it. You know, uh, you know, against God, the father’s will. Right? Jesus knows God the father’s agenda, uh, you know, and clearly it was not his time. Even the wedding at Cana. We read later on where Mary comes to Jesus and says, hey, uh, perform this miracle, or, hey, there’s a problem. And he says, my time has not yet come. Right? So we know that Jesus had just been baptized. He immediately goes into the wilderness. We know that his time is not yet come to for him to reveal himself as the Messiah. And so he’s he’s tempted to do sometimes a legitimate thing. Yeah, but in an illegitimate way. And I think that there’s a lesson in there, too, because I think for a lot of us, we can justify, you know, and say like, well, you know what I’m doing? Is it really a bad thing? Yeah. And then you say, yeah, but God says, these are the boundaries of that thing, right? You know.

Jeff
Both you and I have been in the Jordan River baptizing.

Chris
Yes.

Jeff
Right. And the traditional belief was that John was baptizing, probably, uh, along the the stretch of the Jordan River. That would have been there’s kind of a there’s a road that goes down from Jerusalem down to Jericho. Jericho sets up right near the Jordan River. So very likely that’s where he was, because people were coming and going, coming and going from Jerusalem to come in here and see John the Baptist preach. So that wilderness there, there’s probably not there aren’t very many places on the planet I’ve been to. And I’ve been to some very desolate places. There aren’t very many places that are more desolate than that area. On the northern end of the Dead Sea, the the the caverns, the the, the valleys, uh, there’s so much erosion. There’s no grass, there’s hardly any trees, a few palm trees. There’s almost no water. Right. Did you go to Engedi, where the spring was? Where the fresh water. David? Uh, cut off Saul’s, uh, the corner of Saul’s garment there. No, there’s there’s a there’s a stream there. There’s another stream that they flow down in. But other than that, there’s almost nothing out there. No place for water. Uh, unless you go into Jericho. This is a brutally difficult. As a matter of fact, at one point, we were walking into the cavern where Engedi is at. This, this, this place. And one of the guys, he lifted up his watch. He has like one of those Garmin, uh, adventure watches. Yeah. And it said it was 128 degrees.

Chris
That is crazy.

Jeff
Yeah is that nuts? Yeah. So it was just inside that valley. Now, when we got out of the valley, it was like 108, but inside it was 20 degrees.

Chris
So much better. Jeff
Yeah. So we’re talking about the brutality of Jesus going out into the wilderness alone.

Chris
Oh yeah. Jeff
It’s unbelievable. And then he’s fasting during this time. So he’s not eating the physical weakness that he went into in this time. Now he was going in the power of the Holy Spirit, which you and I have the power of the Holy Spirit available to us to.

Chris
We all do.

Jeff
But but he goes in the power of Holy Spirit. But he’s fasting. He’s weak. And it’s totally normal to want to eat. And so Satan comes to him. But it’s interesting. Satan tries to get him to use his power for himself. Mm. Right. And Jesus said no. And I think that’s a temptation for us to use the blessings and benefits, uh, that the Holy Spirit has given us for ourselves. And Jesus declines that the other one, you know, I’ll give you everything. Uh, we’ll just we’ll just because your whole goal is to to bring the whole world to you anyways, I’ll give you the whole world. Just worship me. And he could have he could have avoided. He could have avoided the cross. He could have avoided all these things in his mind. So to do the right thing the wrong way, you know, right intentions. And so this is one of those things, uh, for me, when I read this passage, this is maybe the strongest place in the Bible for me, where people will say, maybe, maybe, you know, I did it the wrong way, but my heart was right. My intentions were good. That’s precisely what Satan was appealing to Jesus on. Your intentions are good, but doing it the wrong way still makes it completely wrong. Not just kind of wrong, even if your intentions are good, makes it completely wrong. And so he rejected that. And then obviously not allowing Satan to twist scripture. We just have to be aware of the fact that there are a lot of people out there. Satan did not come to Jesus trying to get him to, uh, build an altar in his in his closet. Start sacrificing cats, right?

Chris
Right.

Jeff
Pentagrams. Hey, you now, get 66 tattooed on your head. These aren’t the things we tend to think of pure evil as Satan’s temptations. Eventually Satan gets you to pure evil, but he doesn’t start that way. He always starts with very reasonable things and even uses the Bible.

Chris
Yeah.

Jeff
To twist it out.

Chris
From the very beginning. You know, the original sin in the Garden of Eden. Uh, he took he took God’s words and twisted them just enough. Yeah. And so it was sort of a half truth.

Jeff
And so Eve saw that it was good. Right? That’s what it said. Eve saw that it was good for food.

Chris
Well, I mean, the things that the the serpent said in the, in the garden were kind of true. Yeah. He said, Did God really say that? By the way? That’s just a classic line, isn’t it? Yeah. Did God really say because what he did before twisting the words, was he sort of questioning the authority? You know, did he say that you’re going to die? You’re not going to die. God knows that. You’ll be like him, knowing good and evil. That’s why he told you not to eat of the fruit. You’re not going to die. Which, by the way, both of those things are kind of true. That’s right. Because they didn’t die immediately, right? It’s just that the death process came into humanity and they started to die in that moment. That’s right. Right. And so that’s what that’s what God was announcing and meaning. And then he said, you’ll be like gods. Well, that was also true because it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right, right, right. So they immediately knew they were naked. They knew things that they didn’t know before, which means they knew some of the things that God knew. And so again, Satan is just a master at just twisting the truth just enough. Yeah, yeah. Which is what he’s doing here with Jesus 100%.

Jeff
So then, um, having an awareness that Satan is not coming, we think we’re so clever when we see, you know, oh, those Satanists want to put up that evil statue. That’s evil. No lie. Good job, Sherlock, right?

Chris
Right. Of course.

Chris
Thanks for that update, Copernicus.

Jeff
Yeah, exactly. But it’s it’s when you’re really spiritually discerning, you’re aware that there are a lot of things that are packaged as good that lead to evil, right? And this is why knowing God’s words, particularly in this moment. So you don’t always find Jesus throughout, throughout his teaching, going, quoting the commands, right you it man shall not live by bread alone. You must not tempt the Lord your God. Right? So Jesus has has really driven into him. He knows the commands of God. So in his weakest moments when he’s not thinking clearly and he’s not feeling super clever and he’s not sophisticated or nuanced in his approach. At the bedrock of who he was was the commands of God, and he had those. So when Satan brings in all these clever little packaged things, Jesus could sniff it out quickly, because even in his weakest moment, he knew what the commands of God were. And that’s where the value of really studying the commands of God. You know, we spent a bunch of time in revelation and in, in, uh, prophecy a couple of weeks ago. Right. And that was fun. It was very interesting stuff. But, dude, we had twice as many viewers. We had 70% more new subscribers during that time. But let us pivot into two weeks of commands of God. Let us do ten days on the commands of God. And now we have, you know, it dropped way, way, way, way off because Christians aren’t looking for what are God’s commands. Christians are looking for the clever, interesting, you know, mind bending things. But those things aren’t what rescued Jesus in this temptation moment. It was the foundational commands of God that Jesus was able to rely on. And I think that that because in my weak moments, I don’t have the ability to sort it out.
Jeff
I just have to come back to I trust God, and God said no, and that’s okay. Or I trust God, and God said, I must, so I will. And that’s okay, because there’s so many times when I’m at my weakest, I’m not in my right mind spiritually. Um, I want to get clever. And you never find Jesus being clever here. Yeah. So if you find yourself trying to nuance some kind of, oh, God just wants me to be happy. That’s why I need to divorce my my wife. Dude, you know, you’re trying to get too clever, and and that’s where you’re going to wind up the devil. The devil wraps up his temptations, usually in clever ways, not in evil ways.

Chris
Yeah, well, that’s really good.

Chris
Yeah, well, that’s a great place to end. And, uh, it’s a good thought for sure. So we’ll see you next time. Hopefully on The Bible Guys.