Passage of the Day - December 9, 2012

Matthew 4:1-11

4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. ³ And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” ⁴ But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

⁵ Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶ and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command His angels concerning You’;

and

‘On their hands they will bear You up,
So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”

⁷ Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

⁸ Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; ⁹ and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” ¹¹ Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.

This used to be a very confusing verse to me.  You see, I created in my mind a view of the Trinity that isn't accurate.  I thought of the Triforce.  Yes, that Triforce (from the Legend of Zelda).  I used to think it was three equal powers working together as one entity in perfect harmony.  It sounds good, until one runs into a passage like this.

How can God be tempted?  From James chapter 1, we know that God cannot be tempted, yet here we are.  This is very confusing and some explain it away as the "great mystery" that is the Trinity.  That works for the believer, but not the skeptic, Muslim, or Jehovah's Witness.  This is why it is important for us to have a strong understanding of the relationship between the three Persons of the Godhead.  As we discussed before, Jesus is the perfect, unadulterated, personification of the Message of God.  Just as my message is me, yet not me the person, so it is that Jesus is God, yet not God the Person.  Therefore, the Person Jesus Christ is able to be tempted without violating the principle laid out in James chapter 1.

With this understanding, let's take a closer look at what is actually going on.  We typically look at this verse as Satan making three futile attempts at tempting the Son of God to reject Himself and choose Satan instead.  It almost seems silly.  However, Satan wasn't attempting to convert Jesus to Satanism.  He was pulling out all the stops to taint the Message of God.  He played word games with Eve to cause The Fall, surely he could trip up the Message of God into falsehood or self-rigtheousness.  Instead, the Message of God always perfectly brought attention back to God.  The Message of God came out of the forty days just as pure as it went in and was not found lacking.  We find in this passage that Jesus Christ was not self-seeking, but rather sent to bring God's Message to the people and to bring the people to God.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
© Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission." (http://www.lockman.org/)