In his sermon titled 'He is Able to Aid Those Who are Tempted,' Scott Brown explores the significance of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness as depicted in Matthew 4:1-11. Brown emphasizes the duality of encouragement and conviction this passage brings, highlighting Jesus' victory over temptation as a model and source of victory for believers. He stresses that Jesus' triumph demonstrates that believers can approach God boldly, confident in His provision and care. The sermon elaborates on the nature of temptation, noting how the devil exploits personal weaknesses and attempts to drive a wedge between believers and their Heavenly Father. Brown underscores the importance of recognizing one's sins, using scripture as a weapon against temptation, and understanding trials as opportunities for spiritual growth and humility. He draws parallels between Jesus' experience and the Christian journey, asserting that trials are part of God's design for His children. The sermon concludes by affirming that Jesus' obedience and victory are imputed to believers, offering them comfort and assurance in their spiritual battles.

The text for the scripture today is Matthew 4 verses 1 to 11. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights. Afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him he said, If you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread.

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up into the holy city and said to him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone. Jesus said to him, It is written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.

Then Jesus said to him, away with you, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him." What we have before us here is a text that is so gigantically encouraging on the one hand because it shows that our Savior was victorious and we learn about that that Christ is our life and we will be revealed with Him in glory. His victory is our victory. His victory of over sin here in this passage becomes our victory. So It should lift our hearts.

Your anchor holds. Let the wildest storm come. Your anchor holds because Christ Christ has kept all the commandments for you. I can't think of anything else than that his obedience would become imputed to us and we would become victorious as he has. It's also very, for me, very disturbingly convicting because my sins are pranced before me in so many areas.

These general areas bring up so many specific failures of me, of my family, and I know all of us here as well. As we begin to inspect this passage of Scripture though, I would like for us to just consider something that might sound so strange to begin with at a time like this, but I just want to ask, I just want to ask before we begin, Do you believe that this is the Word of God? Do you believe that this is the voice of God? Do you really believe that God is now going to speak through His Word? If you don't believe that, then I don't know what will happen as a result of this time today.

But This here is what man cannot live without. And it is your only weapon, it's your only comfort, and it's your only guide. And so I just want to have us just consider sort of the holiness of the moment. The holiness of the moment is not established by me who is here. I'm not a holy man.

And it is established though by something that is holy and just and good and it's made for us today. I just want us to consider the awesome situation that we're in now as we hold up this word before us. This passage of Scripture is designed to be an aid to us as we are being tempted in this life. This passage of Scripture is so critically important for us because the writer of Hebrews says that what happened here in the wilderness with the Lord Jesus Christ has done something for you and I. His victory over temptation here in the wilderness has done something so that we can become boldly before Him because He's been victorious with sin.

Because Hebrews chapter 4 verses 16 through 18 says that He was tempted in every way that we are. Therefore, therefore, we can come boldly. So what's happening here in the wilderness is the only reason that we can come boldly before God and cry out to Him as our God, the one who has made us, the one who has placed us in this world at this time in history. Now, This text is also, it's a weapon for all of our spiritual warfare that we're engaged in now. And for anyone who would want to resist the devil, What is here in this passage shows us the critical areas that the devil attacks all of us.

And as I've read through this over and over again, it strikes me that it really, though it doesn't name dozens of sins, it brings dozens of sins to the surface so it helps us to understand the ways that we are being attacked by the devil and you know it really it really helps us to understand the dramatic difference between a fitful, fearful, compromising life and one that is like the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is the most significant battle in the Bible. There was a battle waged in the Garden of Eden with the devil. And now this is another, but even more significant battle, because this is the battle where victory is gained and There was a war by the devil against the first atom and now Just in terms of the history of redemption. There's another battle against the second Adam.

This is very significant in terms of redemptive history. You have to understand the history of the world in order to understand your life. If you don't understand this, you can't understand your problems, you can't understand your marriage, You can't understand the problems you're having at work. You can't understand the issues that are going on in your soul that would cause you to fall. And so the historical perspective is really, really important in this passage of Scripture.

Now here's something, just continuing by way of introduction that we need to really understand. This battle shows us absolutely the most dangerous temptation that there is. And it's the temptation that the Son of God experienced here. And it's the temptation to be separate from your Father in heaven. The devil is trying to drive a wedge between a father and a son.

And that is absolutely the most dangerous thing that can happen to us is as we are separated from Him. The devil says, if you are the son of God, that's very significant, because the devil is desiring to drive a wedge between a father and his son. We know that Jesus is the embodiment of Israel. He's going into the wilderness in the same way that the children of Israel went into the wilderness for a time of temptation. And now Jesus is, he is Israel.

And he's doing everything that we see Israel experiencing, except one thing. Where Israel fell, Jesus Christ prevailed. That's the difference. And so there is this imagery that's running throughout the Gospel of Matthew. You've already seen it.

As the writer of the Gospel of Matthew is, or Matthew's writing, he's saying, this is that, this is that. Now he's saying, this temptation in the wilderness with the Lord Jesus Christ is that that took place in the wilderness by the children of Israel, except now Israel prevails. And His victory is our victory. So the first thing that we see here in the first two verses is that Jesus is led by the Spirit into temptation. In verses 1 and 2 we see it very clearly, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights afterward he was hungry. And so you get the basic details of the story. When, When it happened. It happened right after his baptism and his father saying, this is my beloved son. He has just been authorized by his Father to come and do His work.

The Spirit of God has come and rested upon Him. It's a time of great victory. It's a time of great satisfaction. A father has said to his son, this is my beloved son. Imagine that, sons.

Every son needs to hear his father say, this is my beloved son. The Lord Jesus Christ has just heard that from his own father. And so he now is entering from this time of victory into a time of great temptation and great travel. That often happens. After a time of victory, there comes a time of disappointment, temptation, calamity.

Sometimes they're horrific. And This is a picture of the Christian life as well. A person becomes a Christian and then they find that all hell breaks loose upon them. They actually feel the Holy Spirit has come upon them. They know that the power of sin has been broken and then the devil attacks them viciously for 40 days and 40 nights.

And that's what happens often to those who turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, is that they are tested all their life long. This is, it's very, very important to understand this whole thing because this is a mirror of our own lives. People think that when they become a Christian that now all of their troubles are over. They think that because the Spirit of God has descended upon them and they have felt a joy like they never have known before. They understand what Jesus meant when He said, My peace I give unto you.

They understand what it means. Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. They understand I am the bread of life. They understand I am the light of the world. They understand that.

But then the devil begins to attack them. And let me just say this, brothers and sisters, he attacks you all the days of your life until you finally are lifted up from this earth. Now there are many people who think, am I really saved because there are all these attacks on my life? And the answer is, well there may be other reasons why you may think that you're not saved. But if your life is full of tumult and difficulty and trials and temptations, this is the kind of life that Jesus Christ has for His sons.

God the Father has appointed this kind of life for His Son. And we now are His sons and daughters. He's the firstborn among many brethren. He's the captain of our salvation. He's leading us in the way of salvation.

He leads the way first. He goes there. One of our friends says, as a leader you've got to lead. A leader doesn't say, here go take Hill 42. He goes and He takes it.

That's what Jesus Christ is doing here. He's leading in salvation. You know, often it's so important to understand the nature of our responses to temptation and trial, difficulty, disappointment and things like that. We often think, I'm not saved, God is not blessing me, something is wrong. Now that's not true, necessarily.

God may be actually judging you or chastising you in a particular way, but that too is the love of God as well. Our response should be the same. It should both, whether God is bringing us into temptation just to strengthen us or to chastise us from our own sins, our response should just be the same. And here's a point of maturity that we need to understand from this passage of Scripture. And that is this.

Is it possible that there's anyone here today that needs to grow up and understand this today? That There's an aspect of maturity that says, yes, I know that God has designed a life of trials and temptations. Do you need to grow up today? Do you need to finally have the scales taken off your eyes and forget the idea that the Christian life is some kind of sweetness and bliss, and it's conflict-free, it's difficulty-free. And perhaps maybe you became a Christian because you wanted to be relieved of the conflict and the difficulty.

And so it may be necessary to grow up and understand that God has things for you, for His own glory and for your own good. And we also see here in these first two verses that it is the devil that is attacking. Now we could talk a lot about the devil, the accuser of the brethren, the liar, the serpent, the dragon. This is who we're talking about here. This is the one who knew how to attack Job and attack him at his point of success.

We know that this is the one who knew how to attack the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the time of this temptation happened during a time of hunger, a time of 40 days of fasting. Luke seems to indicate that the Temptations took place throughout the 40-day period. But we know that he was hungry fairly quickly because he was a man. He was given a man's body.

And so his hunger was just like your hunger. And I don't know if any of you have ever fasted 40 days and 40 nights, But the Lord Jesus went through all the various stages of fasting that the human body engages in when it is involved in fasting. And so the devil now is attacking the Lord Jesus Christ at his time of greatest weakness. The devil is wise in one way, and that is that he has some knowledge of how to attack those whom he hates. The devil hates you and he has a terrifying plan for your life.

The devil desires to undo every good thing in your life and don't think anything else but this, that he will attack you at the point of your weakness. He'll attack you at the point of your idolatry. He'll attack you at the point of the patterns that you've had all your life long. The devil is like that. And he is here attacking the Lord Jesus Christ at his moment of greatest physical weakness in the wilderness, after he has been depriving himself of food.

It was his father that led him to deprive himself of food, and now the devil is attacking the fatherhood of God in his life as we see in this next section. In the first temptation in verses 3-4, we see that The devil is attacking the Lord Jesus Christ at the point of his weaknesses. Isn't that true about all of us? That if you have the fear of man running deep in your blood, he'll attack you there. If you love pleasure, He'll attack you there.

If you love pleasure, He'll attack you there. If you have nursed anger, He'll attack you there. And you'll sin publicly and privately. If You have lustful eyes and you've cultivated lust and you've filled your heart with pornography. If you've filled your mind with romance novels, if you've filled your ears with songs that speak of immorality, The devil will attack you right there in the place of the cultivation of your weakness.

And this is how the devil always works. He attacks us right where we are. He's the great customizer. He wraps his temptations around the very thing that he knows is your cause of stumbling in so many ways. And so as the devil is wise in that sense, we too are also to be wise, it should help us to understand how important it is for us to confess our sins, to be able to name them one by one so that we know that that's the place where the devil comes to afflict me.

He afflicts me when I'm depressed. He afflicts me in this situation or that situation. You have to know your sins or you have no hope of resisting the devil. The Lord Jesus Christ was attacked at his moment of greatest weakness after a period of privation of food. And so he attacks him like this.

And when the tempter came to him, he came to him as a tempter. We know that there are many names for the devil. Here he's called the tempter. So that should help us to understand what kind of relationship the devil has with us. If anyone wants to cultivate a relationship with the devil, they just have to understand his name and who he is and what he is all about.

His temptation is to destroy you, to wreck your life. There's one waiting to wreck your life. There's a moment of time in which that wreckage can be unleashed and he does it through his work as tempter. You see that word is there to help us understand what his role in our lives happens to be. The tempter came to him and said if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.

So the tempter comes and the first thing that he does is He questions His sonship. He threatens His security. His Father has just said, this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. And this is where the devil is constantly attacking us to help us think somehow that we're lost in this world without God in the world, without hope, without help in the world. And this is what God would have us to pay attention to.

But the tempter comes and he says, if. Now what the Lord Jesus Christ heard in his ears is the exact same thing that you and I hear in our ears. If you are a son of God. If you are. This is an issue of fatherhood.

The devil, the devil is called the father. The Lord Jesus said, no, your father is the devil. So there's an element of fatherhood, of guidance, of leadership, of protection, of help, of comfort that's at stake here, if you are the Son of God. And this is the first line of attack, to question whether you are a son of God. And so he's challenging Jesus' identity, And he's wanting to lure the Lord Jesus to doubt God's sovereign care.

And So he says, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. And so the devil desires to displace God the Father as provider. Now God has already led the Lord Jesus up to this point. And now there's an attempt to displace the fatherhood of God over the Son of God. And by the way, what the devil is saying is something that you and I hear in our ears all the time.

Who is going to provide for you? Obviously not God. You're hungry. You're out of this. You're out of that.

Who is going to provide for you? That's what the devil is saying. Now, let's remember that this is not the first time that someone fell by eating. In the Garden of Eden, man fell by eating, by the desires of his flesh, by something that was beautiful, something that was pretending to be satisfying, that the devil had presented. This is how we fall, often by eating.

Often our eating patterns are reflective of our spiritual life. This is why the category of gluttony is addressed in Scripture. Dealing with bodily desires and the authority of God are often reflected in the way that we operate with food. Here the Lord Jesus is being tested on a matter of food. He desires it greatly.

There's much that we could say about food, the blessings of food, the divine purpose of food, for blessing. This is not no argument against food. But it is a point of awareness to help us understand that we are tempted often at this level, at this very physical level, regarding food. And it also brings us into the whole realm of the fears of life. Now most men I've ever known fear.

Most men I've ever known fear provision. It keeps them up late at night, it makes their stomach churn, it makes them cry out to God, it makes them often also disobey God because of their fear. I don't know exactly what the fear looks like in your life when you fear lack of provision from God. But I know men well enough to know that they fear provision. And this is the area of temptation that we find the Lord Jesus Christ in.

And so the devil is watching you, he's knowing you, he's not omniscient, and neither is he omnipotent, but he has enough knowledge by which to attack. And so you're being watched by someone who wants to wreck your life. And here the message is, your father does not know how to take care of you. You're hungry. Is this the kind of father you have who makes you hungry.

If you're the Son of God, why don't you do something about this? And so the Lord Jesus Christ looks at the devil in the eye And he says, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Now I want us to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 8 because This is where the Lord Jesus is quoting from. Deuteronomy chapter 8 helps you to understand what kind of temptation this was and what was happening. When something in the New Testament is quoted, when an Old Testament passage is quoted in the New Testament, you should always turn to it and find out what's really happening there.

Because Jesus is not taking this out of context, He is bringing forward the beautiful context, the meaning that's there, and he's using it to teach something that's fuller and clearer about what was said back in Deuteronomy. So In Deuteronomy, we learn something about hunger. We learn something about trials that Jesus is reminding the devil of. Jesus is actually reminding the devil that God is a good Father, and he has done something in this temptation that is actually good. The devil says, no, it's bad.

But God has said, no, it's actually for a good purpose. So let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 8. The context of Deuteronomy 8 is that Moses is recounting God's provision in the wilderness. And I just want us to recognize something here. The Lord Jesus loved the book of Deuteronomy for times of temptation.

We know that he loved the book of Deuteronomy to help understand various kinds of temptations and various kinds of things because he quotes from Deuteronomy very often. Deuteronomy is the book that Jesus loved. He's constantly quoting from it. But Jesus loved the book of Deuteronomy for the purpose of doing battle with the devil in the time of temptation. And so should you.

Don't ever be afraid to use the Old Testament to wage war today in the New Testament era. If you're afraid of doing that, then you're afraid of doing what Jesus did, you're afraid of doing what Paul did, and you're afraid of doing what the other apostles did. So don't be afraid of that. You can use the Old Testament to fight the battles of today and even this afternoon and tonight and tomorrow and the next day. So that's the context in Deuteronomy.

And what we read in Deuteronomy, we recognize that he is quoting from verse 3. But let's begin in verse 1. Deuteronomy 8 is in a section of Deuteronomy where Moses is doing exposition on the First Commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. That needs to be understood.

When Jesus uses this text, He's declaring the fatherhood of God. He's declaring that He is His Son. He's declaring, this is my Father and I'm obeying the first commandment. So that's the first thing that Jesus does in His temptation, is he really is declaring himself as loving the first commandment. That's a very important principle for understanding temptation.

When you are tempted, remind yourself whose son you are. That's what Jesus is doing. Every commandment which I command you today must be, you must be careful to observe that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led all the way these forty years in the wilderness." Isn't that interesting? The Spirit of God led the Lord Jesus into the wilderness exactly the way that the Lord led the children of Israel in the wilderness.

Jesus is saying this is that. Continuing on, he led you in the wilderness And this next phrase is very, very important. Brothers and sisters, dear brothers and sisters, please let's understand what is in verse 2 for us. To humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. Here Jesus is saying, no, I have a good Father.

He's leading me into the wilderness to test me, to humble me. He's actually improving me. My privations in the wilderness are meant to do something good for me, to make me stronger through testing, to bring me to a place of hunger so that I'm humbled, so that when you come to your trials, don't misunderstand what's happening. God is bringing you there to humble you and to test you. He desires you to be humble, and so He presses in upon you with trials and temptations.

I don't know how many trials and temptations are being waged here in this room today, but I'm sure there are thousands of them that people are experiencing in this room. You need to know this one thing. He is doing this to humble you. God wants you to be humbled. He loves you so much that He would humble you and test you and try you to strengthen you.

And so the Lord Jesus is declaring the fatherhood of God. No, my father loves me. He's humbling me. This is the purpose of our trials. To know what was in your heart.

You know, the problem with trials is it shows us who we really are. We like to make excuses and blame something on the trial. Actually, the trial is just showing us something about us that was always there. My wife and I laugh regularly enough about this problem. When something is coming out of one of our lives, And one of us will say, I think the teacup has been bumped.

Because when the teacup is bumped, something comes out. Something that was in the cup, something that was in the heart, comes out. You might say, my wife yelled at me, and she deserves to be rebuked. She deserves my wrath and my anger the cup was bumped You can blame it on something But no understand this God meant it for your good to show you what was in your heart. Your wife yelled at you and was hard on you to show you how wicked and perverse and angry you are to show you your need of Jesus Christ.

That's why It happened. You've lost your job and now you are depressed. It has happened to show you what is in your heart. You've lost all of your money And now you're angry. It's just shown who you really are.

You might think, well if I hadn't lost all my money I wouldn't be angry, I wouldn't be depressed. That's not true. You were always angry and depressed, and somebody just bumped your cup and it came out. Any cups being bumped? Any cups being bumped?

God is such a good Father that He would bump your cup over and over again. This is life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is sweeter than the one that you thought about because it is better than the one you thought about. Rather than just, you know, you know, peace and love and bells and incense and whatever, God is giving you something to make you strong and to convict you of your sins and show you who you really are. And so the Lord Jesus is saying this now.

That's what He's saying to the devil. Oh, you want to separate me from my Father who humbles me, who tests me? No, absolutely not. Testing to see whether you will keep His commandments. When He tests you and you break His commandments, then you're brought back to a place of repentance.

It doesn't mean that life is over, but it means that the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is effective to bring you back. Verse 3, we're still in Deuteronomy, Chapter 8. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger. Jesus is saying to the devil that God is allowing him to hunger. The hunger is not bad.

Hunger is actually good because it came from the hand of a loving father. And he fed you with man, of which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." So, this first temptation is very helpful to us in our own temptations. And maybe we can just summarize it by this. You are not your own. God is your Father.

And He's leading you in this world through temptations and trials and privations. And it might actually include hunger, that God has ordained you to suffer so that He might humble you, so that He might test what is in your heart, so that your cup might get bumped, so that He might show you His glory, and show you the greatness of His salvation, and show you how much He suffered for the many sins that you've committed. Now the devil though, his message is, you're your own God. Feed yourself. You're the master of your faith.

Don't wait for God. Disobey God. Fear. Fear serving that Father. You know, when men are pressed and tempted with privation, they often sin in many, many ways.

They might neglect their families, they might cut corners, they might break the Sabbath, they might hit the credit card again and again, They might do all kinds of things because they are not trusting in their Father. So the first temptation is distrust of your Father's provision. Distrust of your Father's provision. You can see on the outline there, there are many other things we could say about this first temptation, but I really believe that the heart and soul of it is that the devil is desiring for the Lord Jesus to distrust his Father's provision. And in the same way, this is the way that he will attack you and I to constantly be beating this message that we cannot trust our Father in heaven because he desires to drive a wedge between a father who would have a greater work to do in his sons and daughters lives.

That's the first temptation. Now the second temptation is found in verses 5 through 7 in Matthew. Then the devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone." Now Let's look at what is being said here. First of all, we need to go to Psalm 91 because the devil is quoting Psalm 91.

The devil is an expositor of Scripture. He has something to say about Scripture, and here we find him quoting Psalm 91, and he's actually taking it out of context. He doesn't finish the sentence and give it its full meaning. So in Psalm 91, verse 11 and 12, we read, For he shall give his angels charge over you, but he leaves out the qualifier to keep you in all your ways. To keep you in all your ways.

In other words, the devil only wants us to pay attention to certain parts of the truth. Responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6 verse 16. And he says, it is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God." So the devil leaving this out leaves open the whole category of tempting the Lord your God. And so what does it mean to tempt the Lord your God? Now, if you have an outline, you can see how I've named it right here.

To tempt the Lord your God is to never be satisfied with what God has done. Never be satisfied with what He has already done. And so, Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6, verse 6. Let's go there. Let's look and see what it says.

I'm sorry, 16. We just read the words, for God is a jealous God. And then he says, you shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massa. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, His testimonies, and His statutes which He commanded. You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to cast out your enemies." So Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6.16, and what Moses is talking about in Deuteronomy 6 16 is actually found in Exodus Chapter 17, please turn there Because this is what this is what Jesus is driving at.

We have to understand what He meant, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. What does that mean? I mean, it could mean 10 different things, right? But what did Jesus say that it meant here? We could come up with a number of reasons or a number of ways to explain what it means to tempt the Lord your God.

But Jesus is interpreting this for us and He's giving us this context in Exodus 17. And the context here is that the children of Israel are thirsty and they're in the wilderness and they're complaining and they're crying out to God. And Moses cries out to the Lord and he says, what shall I do with this people? In verse 4, they're about ready to stone me. So it's a time of enormous pressure in Moses' life.

And the Lord says to Moses, go and take the rod with you and then go and strike the rock and so he's in this place is called Massa and Meribah because of the contention of the children of Israel because they tempted the Lord in verse 7. They tempted the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? That's what it means to tempt the Lord, to say Is the Lord among us or not? That's what it means to tempt the Lord. To say, is the Lord among us or not?

God is good to everybody else, but when do I get it? When do I get the outpouring of goodness and grace? I look around and look at every, this person is doing better than I am, that person way better. You know, whatever happened to me? Tempting the Lord your God is to say, is the Lord among us or not?

And then craving for a sign, another sign. In Numbers chapter 14, we read, you tempted me now these 10 times and have not hearkened to my voice. You have tempted me 10 times. The children of Israel were always saying that. They were always saying, Where is the Lord?

Is the Lord among us or not? Show us. Show me. Show me by my success. Show me by my food and my water.

Show me. That's what it means to tempt the Lord your God. It's that kind of a hard attitude. So, tempting the Lord your God is demanding that God's care be proven over and over again. And craving for a new sign of God's presence by being unsatisfied with what he has already done, unsatisfied with the 10, 000 ways he's already showed his love to you, by showing an apparent ignorance of all of God's mighty acts in all of history, and to say, where is he?

Where is he today? What have you done for me today? Show me. That's what it means to tempt the Lord your God. Because that's what the devil was tempting Jesus to do, is to set his father aside and do something interesting to save himself, to actually do something presumptuous on the one hand in order to just prove again that God is good.

It's characterized by complaining. It's characterized by lack of contentment. It's characterized by ingratitude of the blessings He's already given. And it's as if to say, if you really loved me, You would rescue me this specific way. And so I'm just going to throw myself off.

And if you don't rescue me this way, I have a father. His name is the devil. So when Jesus says, you shall not tempt the Lord your God, that's what he's talking about. Psalm 95, verses 8 through 11 speak of this very same thing. Look at verse 8, �Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me.

They tried me, though they saw my work." You've seen God bless you so many times, and yet you're depressed today. You've seen Him provide for you all the days of your life, but you're depressed today because you don't have enough today. You want more than what God has given you, and you're unhappy about it, and your stomach is churning about it, and you have no peace, there's no rest in your soul. That's what it means to tempt the Lord your God. Your fathers tried me though they saw my work.

For forty years I was grieved with that generation and I said to this people, it is the people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my ways, so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest." Do you want the Lord to be grieved with you Because you're depressed that God hasn't given you everything that you want today. Do you want that kind of relationship with your Father in heaven? For Him to be grieved with that generation in your household. You fathers here who are tempted in many ways in this area of dissatisfaction with what God has given you, and you're constantly tempting the Lord your God. There are enormous consequences of tempting the Lord your God.

It's the devil's work when the temptation of the Lord your God is in your heart. And so if you create an atmosphere in your home of never being satisfied, of always clamoring for more, of always being unhappy until you get more. You wives as well, who are beating on your husbands to get more, to provide for you better. Do you have enough food today? Does everyone have enough clothing today?

Is there enough shelter to keep the rain off today? But yet you're on your husband, and you're prodding him to tempt the Lord as God. And you'll prod Him and prod Him and prod Him and He may fall into the same sin. And say, where's God for me? And you'll hear God say, they tried me though they saw my ways, they saw my works.

In Psalm 106, we find this same principle. If you look at verse 14, You'll read verse 13, they forgot his works and did not wait for his counsel. Did not wait for his counsel. That's what the devil was tempting Jesus to do. Don't wait.

Go save yourself. Same thing with bread. But they lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tested God in the desert. But notice the context of Psalm 106. It's a psalm of praise.

Praise the Lord. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His mercy endures forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can declare his praise?

Blessed are those who keep his justice and he who does righteousness at all times." Now this Psalm speaks of this very same thing. It's the temptation not to have a life of thanksgiving. A whole life, a whole family culture, a whole culture of the heart, a whole relationship with your brothers out in the community and in the workplace, A whole culture that says, oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. To tempt the Lord your God is to set that aside and to walk around so burdened and so heavy and come home from work, men, and drag in the door and spread gloom and doom about in your household, depress your wife, yell at your kids, kick the dog, and go read your stupid newspaper. That's what men often do.

Or their websites, and they get lost in one screen after another because they're not giving thanks to the Lord. It's a whole life that's being spoken of here. A whole culture of the heart that comes out. I'm thankful to actually be married to a woman whose mouth is full of, oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. I can't tell you how many times the Lord Jesus Christ has rescued me by my wife, who has spoken words of life to me, to help me not to tempt the Lord my God, and to say, where is it going to be now?

So, tempting the Lord is distrust, lack of contentment, not content with the ways God has provided, in gratitude for the blessings He's given, and saying, If you love me, show me a dad. That's tempting the Lord. And then the third temptation, the third and the last, is found in verses 8 through 10. Again, the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said to him, All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Away with you Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve." Now the devil is a liar from the beginning and he's always promising you a kingdom.

If you think about your sins and the things that you might call the mistakes or whatever, but many of your mistakes are trying to buy a kingdom that God hasn't given you yet, but He's going to give you someday. Jesus said he's going to give the kingdom to his children, but we want to buy it in a lot of different ways before we get there. And so the Lord, the devil was lying to the Lord Jesus by telling him he had a kingdom. He had a kingdom that would be absolutely a tumultuous, torment, horrible, poisonous, wicked, devastating, destructive, collapse. That was his kingdom that he was offering.

But he's tempting him, the devil is tempting Jesus with the kingdom that his father has already promised him. Now many of our sins go back down to that. We've been promised a kingdom but we want it now. And so the devil is tempting the Lord Jesus for a shortcut to glory. Take the fast track of glory.

See, Glory for the Lord Jesus was the suffering and the shame of the cross. It was rejection of men. It was being despised and rejected. That was the path to glory. We want a path to glory that's a lot more glittering than that, a lot more comfortable, a lot happier than that, a lot smoother than that.

And so the devil is constantly at work to shortcut, to get you short-cutted on glory, to get you feasting on stupid little things that don't satisfy, To get you to get something now when God's already promised you everything. And so I've named this temptation craving for a shortcut for glory. Craving for a shortcut for glory. Achieving the right end through the wrong means. Tempting for instant power and success.

And what Jesus does to deal with that is he goes back to the exposition of the first commandment and he says, you shall fear the Lord your God and serve him only. And serve him only. God's path to glory is the suffering of the cross, and Satan's path to glory was for instant power. When the writer of Hebrews says that he was tempted in every way as we are, can you relate with that? Have you ever been tempted that way?

To take a shortcut to the glory. There's so many ways that we do that. We might do it with a credit card. We might do it through our own bravado. We might do it through our own bravado.

We might do it through our own anger and our own force of personality. We might do it with our money. We might do it without our money. We might do it because we don't have money. There are all kinds of ways that we short circuit, we shortcut the path to glory.

When God would have us to ride out the trouble, We search for the medicine cabinet. That's what America does right now. It tries to fix all of its problems through medicine. So we have the most medicated culture on the planet in history. Because people want a shortcut to glory.

They want to fix their problem right now. And they'll do anything to get it. Some men take the shortcut to glory through pornography on the internet. Some women take the shortcut to glory by reading about other other women's relationships with men that are better than theirs. There are a lot of different ways that you short make a shortcut to glory.

Now the Lord Jesus here had a path of suffering ahead of him. And the devil is tempting him on the level of craving for a shortcut to glory. And then finally, in verse 11, after the Lord Jesus said, away with you Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only, then the devil left him, and behold angels came and ministered to him." So we learn a number of things here. One is that the devil can come and go. He can come and go.

He came with Job, He came with the Lord Jesus, and He will come again. There are times of temptation that are greater than others. We have to be aware of that. The times of temptation often correspond with our moment of greatest weakness. We should pay attention to that as well.

When you begin cultivating sinful thoughts and habits, understand you're opening yourself up as a target for the devil. And he has a terrifying plan for your life. Husbands when you know your wife is weak, pray for her. She's vulnerable. Wives, children, you understand what's happening here.

There are moments when the devil comes and there are moments when the devil leaves. That doesn't mean that the world and the flesh and the devil are not somehow operating upon us all the time because they are. And then the angels come. Now this is a very beautiful ending to the temptation. The angels are involved in the battle.

We know that there are battles in the heavens. Michael the archangel. And in the days of Daniel, we see this very dramatic battle taking place in the heavens and it affects what's going on in the world. So the angels are involved in the battle, but they are ministering spirits in order to render service to those who will inherit salvation. In Hebrews chapter 1, they're actually called deacons.

If you ever want to be a deacon, you're going to be like an angel. Because that's what deacons do. They do the work of an angel. They feed, they help, they render service. That's the term that Matthew uses, is the term for deacon.

And God gives these earthly angels in the church called deacons, but he also has his angels in heaven that he deploys for those who would inherit salvation to help them. They're protectors and they are warriors. Okay, I'd like to just give you a few applications here. First of all, do you see the sin here? Do you see the objective of the devil to drive a wedge between you and your father to cause you to distrust his fatherly care toward you and then to jump the gun and do whatever you think needs to happen rather than wait and suffer.

Are you suffering now? You just You just can't wait to get out of the suffering and you're going to do anything to break it. No. Wait. Wait on the Lord.

Wait on the Lord. Because In order to go and fix the problem in your own way, it just means that there's a wedge between your father, fear has overcome you, and unthankful, fearful, fretful, I'm being jerked around kind of life will overcome you. So it's so important that we understand this temptation, that we wait in our times of suffering and difficulty. We wait. Number two, This is really a good case for Scripture memory, right?

Jesus is out in the wilderness all alone. And He's using the Scriptures to do battle. That's what we ought to do as well. We should be memorizing Scripture. It should be on our lips.

Jesus does business with the devil on the basis of God's holy word. And so we should be dedicating time to memorize the word of God, to have it in our hearts, to speak it to one another, so that we might prevail in times of temptation. Knowing the Word of God in your heart is so helpful. When David said, you always fill my heart with songs of deliverance whenever I'm afraid. It's because He said, oh how I love thy law, it's my meditation all the day.

There's such help in the Word of God. And so there's a case that can be made here that you ought to know the Word of God. And then the final application really is really an application of comfort and joy. Christ's temptations are our temptations. Not only does He show us the way to victory, but His victory is our victory.

No Christian should leave here today without a sense of victory upon their souls, because Christ has been victorious. Your anchor holds. Let the wildest storm come, your anchor holds. Because Christ, Christ was victorious. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then we shall be revealed with Him in glory.

Christ is your life. What happened here is yours. His obedience has been granted, bequeathed to you, supernaturally at the moment of your conversion. And his victory became your victory. I was with a young man yesterday.

He said, do you know what day it is today? I don't know. I don't know. It's Saturday. He said, today is the day I was converted right over there on this day.

I think it was three years ago, the power of sin had been broken. He grew up in a wonderful family, sweetest family you'll ever know. And he was like many young men, unconverted, a good boy. But that day, that day, the victory of Jesus Christ became His. And He said, right over there, right over there, the power of death was broken.

Right over there, all of the shame that should have been mine became Jesus Christ. All of the punishment that was mine became Jesus Christ and how was set free. And He is our elder brother. He has been victorious over all of his temptations. And He never sinned and He never caved in to any of these temptations.

And His victory is ours. And His victory is ours. And that's why, when you read Hebrews chapter 2, And you read about the Lord Jesus Christ and His temptation. Here's what you read. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things.

In bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings For both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all one. Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself has suffered, being tempted is able to aid those who are tempted. And that, brothers and sisters, is why the Lord Jesus Christ was taken into the wilderness and tempted by the devil to give you aid. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this temptation that you endured, for not taking the shortcuts, for not trying to make your own bread, but your Father's sustenance only. Oh Lord, that we would be like Him. That when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, we shall be revealed with Him in glory. Amen.