HOW TO SPOT SATAN & RESIST HIM PT.3
On April 9th I wrote part 2 of this blog and in that post I discussed the second temptation of Christ by satan in the bible found in Luke 4:5-8 (please see for reference). I touched on how satan’s main objective was to tempt Jesus to fall down & worship him. Thus, distrusting God’s ultimate plan of redemption for man & taking matters into his (Jesus) own hands. Also, in that temptation, satan claims to be given all the kingdoms of the world & offered them to Jesus freely in exchange for worship. I ended the post by explaining how satan tempts Christians in the same way. One of satan’s strategies is to get us to distrust God’s word so that we take our eyes off Jesus & place them on our immediate circumstance & come up with our solutions to resolve our problems.
Today I want to focus our attention on the third temptation of Christ, found in Luke 4:9-13. It states, “Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.]12 And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ” Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.”
In this verse satan is trying to use another one of his tactics to get Christ to disobey God. This particular tactic by satan is very subtle & clever. Here’s why. Satan is noticing that every time he tries to tempt Jesus, Jesus consistently fires back and defeats him with the word of God. In essence, it is almost like satan is saying to Jesus, “Oh! So you want to use the word of God, huh?” because he then proceeds to quote Psalms 91:11-12 to Jesus. It states, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Did you notice the subtle attack here? Psalms 91 is talking about protection for the Messiah, so Satan tries to use scripture to get Jesus to prove something God has said. This gives us much insight. Satan knows the bible very well & he clearly has no problem using God's word in a distorted way to try & deceive us. But of course, Jesus knew exactly what satan was trying to do so Jesus continued to speak the word of God quoting Deuteronomy 6:16. It states, ”You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah.” I truly love how Jesus set an example for us. He uses the word of God in its proper context against satan & does not attempt to act independently of God.
Now verse 13 Luke chapter 4 clearly shows Christ defeating satan in all his clever temptations. Notice how verse 13 says Satan departed from Jesus until an opportune time. The lesson to be learned in that statement is this: satan is relentless & just because we defeat him today doesn’t mean he will not come back tomorrow. For example, he showed up later on in Jesus ministry through the apostle Peter. In the book of Matthew 16:21-23 it states “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” In those verses Jesus didn’t rebuke Peter, but rather satan. Peters rebuke seemed harmless when he told Jesus that he would not die on the cross, but Jesus knew that avoiding the cross was extremely harmful & rebellious. Our salvation & eternal destination was at stake.
The lesson to be learned here is no matter how noble something sounds to us, we must always measure whatever nobility we perceive against the word of God. satan is a deceiver & his temptations will be subtle & appear harmless.
Satan also showed up again through another one of Jesus' disciples. Luke 22:3 found in the bible states, “Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve.” This verse is simply saying satan entered Judas to help carry out his evil plot to kill Jesus. Now I do want to bring a little bit more clarity to satan prompting Judas to betray Jesus. It would appear that satan entered Judas & then Judas became possessed & immediately turned into this backstabbing deceiver who all of a sudden decided to betray Christ. But if we are not careful many people will buy into the whole idea of the devil made me do it mentality. I’d like to propose that the devil can’t force any of us to do anything against our own will. Why do I say that? Well, it’s because Jesus gave a huge insight into why satan couldn’t force him (Jesus) to sin against God. In John 14:30 it states (NKJV) “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.” In this verse, Jesus is talking to his disciples about his soon departure from this world. But Jesus is making it crystal clear that satan’s tactics on him were never effective because there was nothing inside of him for satan to latch on to & use against Christ that would cause him to fall into sin. Simply put Jesus had no sin inside of him for satan to use as leverage.
The point I’m trying to drive home is that Judas was already money hungry & very discontent. Judas would often steal money from the treasury for his own selfish needs. So in essence satan used Judas's desire for money & his discontentment & leverage Judas to betray Jesus. The life lesson here is it’s no different for us, satan uses whatever is sinful within us & preys on that particular weakness each of us has & uses it to cause us to sin against God. For example, here’s a list of things found in us satan can use as leverage to move us away from God. (Pride, Lust, Anger, Discontentment, Lack of faith, Desire for riches, etc. Another verse to back this up is James 1:14 (NKJV) it states “14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.”
So how does this third temptation of Jesus by satan apply to our lives & what was satan really after? In short, satan was simply trying to get Christ to presume on God’s grace. Or another way to put it, satan wanted Jesus to trust God presumptuously. Satan thought he could tempt Jesus to have God prove something that He already promised in his word, in other words, force God's hand. I have personally witness professing Christians fall prey to this particular sin. I have seen friends decide they were trusting God by faith to bless their new business venture & with little planning they find a scripture in the bible about trusting God by faith & decide to quit their job & in their words dive out on faith & pursue this newfound dream. Now I’m not against leaving your job to start a business. But what I am saying is we shouldn’t make decisions like that foolishly, the idea is to make sure there’s proper planning along with prayer before making life-changing decisions. The idea is not to presume on God’s grace & say things like “God I know you are a provider & can make a way out of no way. So I’m going to leave this job you’ve blessed me with & with no money or idea of how I’m going to make it, I trust that you will provide for my needs. The reason I say this is a sin & trusting God presumptuously is that the job you already had was providing for your needs even if it wasn’t the job you wanted. So in a metaphoric term to dive off a cliff before quitting your job & ask God to catch you before hitting the ground is in no doubt falling prey to the third temptation of Christ.