“According
to Matthew”
A study of the Gospel of
Matthew
Part 4: Testing Times
We
began our journey into Matthew with the opening credits and witnessed
a potentially Oscar winning cast list of descendants. We then
witnessed the continuing dreams of Joseph and the arrival of gentile
princes to witness the birth of one born to be King of Kings. We were
given a glimpse into the darkness of King Herod the Great before
journeying down to the banks of the Jordan and witnessing Jesus being
baptized by John.
We
noted John’s reluctance to baptize Jesus and the revelation that
appeared following the baptism. The voice of God declares ‘This
is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.
The Holy Spirit hovers over Him in the likeness of a Dove. We saw how
both the proclamation and the symbolism had a background rooted in
scripture.
It
is time for us now to leave the waters and head into the wilderness.
Let us look at the opening verse of chapter 4.
‘Then
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the
devil.’ (Verse
1)
The
baptism of Jesus was a spiritual highpoint, both for John and for
Jesus. For John it was the revelation that the One whom he had been
waiting for had arrived. For Jesus there was a confirmation of His
identity as the beloved Son of God and the empowering of the Holy
Spirit as He began the work He had been born to accomplish. But as so
often happens following a spiritual high, there is a time of testing.
For
John that testing came in the form of his arrest and eventual
execution. For Jesus it came as the Spirit led Him into the
wilderness to prepare for the days that lay ahead of Him. We are also
introduced to the character of the devil, the great adversary and
opposer of all that Christ will seek to do.
Satan,
Lucifer or the Devil as he is known, appears in a number of biblical
books. He’s there in the second creation account offering Eve tasty
fruit. He lays down a challenge to God in the Book of Job. He and his
legions wage war in the Book of Revelation and meet their doom.
In
Matthews’s
gospel the Devil is pictured as a persuader who seeks to convince
Jesus to abandon His mission or take steps that would make it
invalid. He hangs around in the shadows. He makes a brief appearance
when Peter seeks to dissuade Jesus from facing the Cross. Jesus
addresses Peter with the words “Get thee behind me Satan!’
(Matthew 16:23)
The
devil in Matthew is not a comical red robed horned cartoon character,
but something altogether more sinister. He is a personification of
the inner, seductive voice of wrong. He has voice that speaks to our
baser instincts and desires and encourages us to act upon them rather
than seeking a spiritual path.
The
Greek word translated as ‘temptation’ is the word ‘peirazein’.
‘Peirazein’ is better translated as ‘test’ rather
‘temptation’. The object of a temptation is to catch us out but
the object of a test is to enable us to make the right choices. In
school, when we were given a spelling test it wasn’t designed to
make us look stupid but to teach us how to spell correctly. So the
‘tests’ Jesus faces in the wilderness are to help Him clarify His
vision as to how His mission will be accomplished.
Let us
look at the first of the tests. Verses 2-4
After
fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came
to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones
to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does
not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth
of God.' "
Fasting
is a spiritual discipline practiced by both religious and secular
folk. Some fast to lose weight. Others to concentrate on a particular
spiritual discipline such as prayer. Some fast during Lent from a
particular food group such as chocolate. Luke tells us that Jesus ate
no food, Matthew simply tells us He was hungry.
Hunger
is more than just a physical sensation. The atmosphere in the desert
would be dry and hot. Jesus is completely alone. The environment
itself was bleak. Not only does He fast from food but He is removed
from any kind of stimulus.
Matthew
likes to use numbers symbolically. The number 40 symbolized a period
of probation. The rains of Noah’s flood fell for 40 days and 40
nights. Moses receives the 10 commandments during a period of 40 days
and 40 nights he spends on the mountain. When in the wilderness
spies are sent out to survey the Promised Land (Numbers 13:25) the
spies return after 40 days (and presumably 40 nights). The Israelites
roam in the desert for 40 years. Through His 40 days of fasting Jesus
prepares to meet the test.
The
first test comes as a challenge to His identity.
At His baptism a voice has declared Him to be the Son of God. “If
you are the Son of God”
urges the voice; “tell
these stones to become bread”.
During
the 40 years they spent in the desert the Israelites survived on
manna that fell from heaven. Jesus is challenged to make manna from
the rocks of the earth. Such would certainly relieve His physical
hunger pains.
Matthew
Henry comments “Satan is
an adversary no less watchful than spiteful; and the more ingenious
he is to take advantage against us, the more industrious we must be
to give him none. When he began to be hungry, and that in a
wilderness, where there was nothing to be had, then the Devil
assaulted him.” Which
is a round about way of saying that temptations tend to strike us at
our points of greatest weakness.
Yet
this testing isn’t really about food or depravation, but about
identity. If Jesus were the Son of God, why did He have to go hungry?
The voice He had heard, was it for real? Surely turning a little
stone into a morsel to chew upon would dispel any doubts that He had.
Was such a small act really out bounds? Echoes of the Genesis story
and the serpents questioning “Did God really say you shall not eat
the fruit” are translated into “Did God really call you a beloved
son?”
For
many of us we likewise struggle to find our identity within our
faith. At our baptism we are marked with water as a sign of our being
children of the covenant. In the baptismal service we are claimed as
sons and daughters of God. Growing into such an assurance is
life-long process.
Though
we pray every Sunday, ‘Our Father’ we have those times when we
are unsure of both how we relate to God and how God relates to us.
Although we seek to depend upon God and live openly before God we are
also champions of our own independence and are often troubled that
our actions do not well represent the faith we claim to believe in.
When
troubles come we hear people declaring they feel abandoned by God.
Isn’t God our parent? Shouldn’t the parent be taking care of the
child? But not everybody takes that approach. In the Old Testament
book of Job we discover a person whose status as a child of God is
stretched to the limits, yet he remains faithful and we hear him
declare; “Though
he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to
his face. (Job 13:15 NIV).
The
Devil likes to use the word “If”. “If you are so and so… then
do this”. How many times in our own experience have we struggled
with the “If” word? Instead of just getting on and doing
something we have said, “Well if only I had this or was that or had
the other”. How many times do we look back and think “What if?”
Jesus
answers all three of the temptations with the phrase "It
is written”. In each
case the replies He offers come from the Book of Deuteronomy.
To the
temptation to turn stones into bread he responds with Deuteronomy
8:3. The full text comes from a passage shortly after the Israelites
have entered the land of promise and are bid to remember the gracious
provision of their Father God.
It
reads ‘He humbled you,
causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither
you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live
on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the
LORD.” (Deuteronomy
8:3)
In the
original context the words were an exhortation for the people of
Israel to be faithful to the laws of Moses. It was in the law that
they found their unique identity as the people of God. For the
Christian Church it can be read as an encouragement to find out
identity in the revelation of God that we find in the 66 books of the
Bible.
God
knows we need to eat. There are numerous passages (such as the
feeding of the 5000) where the ability of God to meet our needs is
clearly displayed. We are positively encouraged to feed the hungry
and act justly towards the most needy of our sisters and brothers,
for in doing so we are serving Christ. Bread isn’t the issue here!
'Man
does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the
mouth of God.’
What
is at stake is our identity in Jesus Christ as sons and daughters of
an awesome God. To place it in a contemporary context our issue
isn’t so much a lack of bread as an over-abundance of provision
that causes us to forget our reliance upon God. We need to modify the
Lords Prayer from saying “Give us our daily bread’ to read ‘Stop
giving us so much bread that we forget to thank You for it”.
Our
materialistic ways blind us to the need for spiritual growth and
cause us to neglect our need for relationship with God. As we forget
whose we are we also forget who we are. The first test is a challenge
to identity.
The
Temptation to Presumption (verses
5-7)
Then
the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest
point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said,
"throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command
his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' " Jesus
answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God
to the test.' "
Having
failed to rob Jesus of His sense of identity as a Son of God, the
Devil turns things around. “So... let’s say you are the Son of
God. How is anybody going to know about it? I've got a great idea.
Play superman. Show them you can fly! That would be awesome. You know
who you are and if you do this everybody will know who you are.”
The
temple was built on the top of a great plateau with a sheer drop of
450 foot down into the valley below. The ancient historian Josephus
(in his Antiquities) describes it as so very high, that it would make
a man's head giddy to look down to the bottom.
Every
morning the priest would come out onto the roof of the temple and
await the coming of the dawn. When the sun rose the priest would blow
the trumpet and summon worshipers to morning prayer. It would indeed
be quite sensational if once the worshipers had gathered the priest
launched himself out into the unknown and hoards of angels came and
bore him up on their wings! 'I believe I can fly...'
You
will notice that the devil quotes scripture and becomes the one who
says “It is written'. There is nothing in the scripture he quotes
that is unreasonable. The temptations end with Jesus being ministered
to by angels. There are some incidents in Matthew when Jesus escapes
from crowds or triumphs over sticky situations that bore witness to
the fact that God was taking care of Him.
The
devils use of scripture reminds us that just because somebody can
quote the bible chapter and verse that doesn't mean they have good
intentions! There are those who will happily attach their personal
peeves and prejudices to bible verses that seem to suit their
particular causes, be they social, political or financial. And do so
for all the wrong reasons!
It
cautions us to be careful of the way we handle God's Word. Every
verse has a context. Taking verses out of their situations, either
their historical or grammatical contexts, opens them up to being
misinterpreted. You sometimes hear people saying, as though it ends a
debate, 'The Bible says...' Oftentimes you can quietly be thinking to
yourself, 'Yes, but the bible also says....'
Which
is kind of what happens here. Jesus matches the Devil quote for
quote. The quote Jesus gives leaves no room for creating
self-inflating fantasies. “It
is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
There
are many reasons why throwing yourself off high buildings is not
recommended, not least of them being that it is a very, very, stupid
thing to do. However we do well to acknowledge that stupidity and
religion can be very comfortable bedfellows. The Church does not
always take the side of reason!
We
also know that super-human feats and wonders can quickly become
yesterday’s thing. A Kingdom founded on sensation mongering would
be doomed to failure.
Yet
neither of these really get the root of the problem with this
temptation. It is an invitation to presumption. It invites us to
believe that we can do anything, be anything and get away with
anything and that at the end of the day God will smile upon us. It
asks us to deny that our actions have consequences. It suggests we
should not be content with being followers of Jesus Christ but
embrace the notion that we ourselves are gods and that whatever we do
with our lives God will look after us.
If we
expect that because God has promised never to leave us or forsake us,
that we have no obligation to seek to live His way, then we are being
presumptuous. If we believe that because God has promised to supply
our wants, God should give us whatever we fancy; we are fooling
nobody but ourselves.
If we
live on the basis that because God has promised to keep us, we can
happily flirt with any kind of danger or excess; to quote Matthew
Henry 'This is
presumption, this is tempting God. ... He is the Lord our God.... We
must never promise ourselves any more than God has promised us.”
Before
we look at our third temptation I'd ask you to remember that Matthew
has been talking in the previous chapters about kingship. He gave us
that whole chapter about King Herod the Great as a picture of
everything a king wasn't meant to be. And of course everybody knew
that whilst Herod may have been big in Judea, compared to Caesar he
was just a pawn in the game. Because if you were talking about world
domination then really you had to talk about Rome. Judea was a
colony. Rome was an empire.
The
Third Temptation – Idolatry Verses
8-10;
Again,
the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the
kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give
you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus
said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship
the Lord your God, and serve him only.’
Matthew
has pictured Jesus as the descendant of the David, of the Kingly
line, welcomed by worldly Wise Men as being the King of the Jews. But
what sort of Kingdom will he rule over? And what kind of King will he
be?
The
devil takes Him to a very high mountain and lays before Jesus all the
splendor of the world, all that was wonderful and fantastic and
everything that a person could ever desire. 'And you know what
Jesus? All you got to do is one chorus of ‘I did it your way' and
I'll give you the lot. Just a little bit of R-E-S-P-E-C-T , that’s
what I want you to do for me... is that too much to ask?
The
devil’s command challenges Jesus to accept the status quo of the
rebellious state of the world, to acknowledge that violence, power,
selfishness and practical atheism could win the day, and to go along
with the whole show.
Notice
this about the final temptation;
- It begins by looking. Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden the fruit looks good and she can't wait to get a bite of it. So as the riches and glories of the best this world can offer are laid before Him the Devil hopes to entice Jesus. Later He would teach that the eye was a gateway to all kinds of evil.
- It focuses on things. We live in an age where many are possessed by their possessions and no matter how much they get it never seems to be enough. Life isn't about stuff. He who has the most toys leaves one heck of a lot of useless junk for his children to clear up when he's gone.
- It ignores the whole. The Devil just offers up all that glitters and is like gold. The striving and fury of human history, the suffering and inequality of life are completely ignored.
- It appeals only to the unthinking. There is no logic involved in this temptation. Nobody can have it all! Those who try usually end up consumed by the task and die lonely. Absolute power absolutely corrupts.
For
Jesus this was a test to see if He would compromise on all that He
was setting out to achieve. Maybe He could pretend that the human
condition wasn't so bad after all. Maybe He could try and bring
change in the way it usually came, through might, coercion and short
term victories rather than seeing things through the long haul,
whatever it cost.
But He
knew that you couldn’t
change the world by becoming like the world. The last thing the world
needed world was another King of the same old- same old!
His
rebuttal is terse and direct. “Devil... away. Worship only God!’
The First commandment is sharply contrasted with the ways of the
world. Through His actions Jesus declares that there is nothing in
life or on earth, nothing that money can buy or power confer, that is
more important than living a worshipful life before God.
The
tests have been faced and Jesus has passed with shining colors! So we
conclude... verse 11;
Who were these angels? Of course we'll never know, but it always seem to be the case that when you trust in God and are battling through things that God sends along angels to help you through. You think your alone, but your not. Some complete stranger offers a word... that song comes on the radio... you come across that passage in a favorite book you had never noticed before... God provides angels and we often entertain them unawares.
So; temptations. The big three. Avoid them if you can.
Firstly, the temptation to forget that we are daughters and sons of God. That through the grace of Jesus Christ we are Gods ultimate concern.
Secondly, the temptation to presume upon God's love. There is a God and it isn't ourselves.
Thirdly, the temptation to compromise what we believe in order to gain the illusory pleasures of this world. The temptation to make idols of just about anything! Worship God. That's all.
Of course these tests are ones which come to us in many different guises and forms. Hopefully when we recognize them we can come though them and be the stronger for it!
And next time: Jesus finally gets around to beginning His ministry!