The Temptation of Jesus, Part 2

Introduction and Review of Christ's Temptation

0:03 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, September 25th, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:13 Now let us turn together once more to the first chapter of Mark's Gospel, the Gospel according to Mark, Chapter 1.

0:25 Will you follow, please, as I read verses 9 through 13. Mark 1, beginning the reading with verse 9. And it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him.

1:02 And a voice came out of the heavens, You are my beloved Son. In you. In you I am well pleased. And straightway the Spirit impels him forth into the wilderness.

1:18 And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan. And he was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered unto him. Let us again seek the face of God in prayer, together pleading with God that by the Spirit, Spirit, we would understand God's mind as contained in this portion of his own holy word. Let us pray. Our Father, we confess once more that we have stepped again into a veritable theater of mystery. The open heavens, the voice from the heavens, Son of God standing on the banks of Jordan, the Father speaking from heaven, the Spirit coming as a dove.

2:22 And then, O Lord, this profound mystery upon which we have sought to meditate together, that he who was none other than your own eternal Son, God the Son, having taken to himself a real and true humanity, yet still God, should be tempted. And of that foul fiend of hell, even for forty days, our Father, as we stand before such mysteries, we feel the limitations of our own finite minds. We feel, O Lord, with shame the influence of sin upon our minds and upon our hearts. And we therefore cry out of the felt consciousness of creatureliness. And of that sinfulness. Oh God, help us to understand your word, by that help which comes from above. We do not ask to behold rent heavens. We do not ask to hear voices out of the heavens.

3:33 But, O Lord, we do ask to have help from heaven, even the help of your Spirit sent down upon us in this hour. . . . . . . . . Hear us as together we cry for this liturgy and the living. God above, for this help in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We come again this morning to our consideration of this period in our Lord's life which constitutes the final board, as it were, in the threshold over which our Lord passes out of the obscurity of Nazareth and into his public ministry, this incident of the concentrated temptation of our Lord as given to us in Mark's

4:28 gospel, verses 12 through 13. Last Lord's Day morning I sought with you to accomplish basically two things. First of all, to rivet to your minds, and I hope to your memories, the four basic facts that are given to us by Mark, two dominant or major facts, and two secondary or subsidiary facts. Fact number one is that subsequent to the baptism of our Lord, to his anointing with the Spirit, and the voice of identification and approbation out of heaven, Mark tells us that by the Holy Spirit he was impelled into the wilderness. The second major fact is that during this entire period of 40 days, verse 13, our Lord underwent a concentrated period of temptation from Satan, that is, the adversary himself. And then the two secondary facts are that during these 40 days his only living companionship was with the wild beasts of the wilderness, and finally, that during this period the angels of

5:50 God became his deacons and ministered to his needs. We then sought to accomplish a second thing in our study last Lord's Day, namely, to ascertain what this passage with its four major facts tells us about our Lord Jesus. Mark is concerned, according to verse 1, to set before us the gospel which concerns Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And even in the record of the temptation of our Lord there is gospel, and I suggested that this passage proclaims three basic things about our Lord. It proclaims, first of all, the depths of his humiliation and suffering on behalf of sinners. Secondly, it proclaims the reality and the glory of his triumph on behalf of sinners.

Justification for Connecting Christ's Temptation to Ours

6:50 And then, finally, this passage proclaims the reality and largeness of his sympathetic heart towards his tempted people. Now, what I propose to do this morning is what I promised you I would attempt to do last Lord's Day, namely, to concentrate our attention now upon what these verses teach us about the temptations, of the people of God. Having contemplated our Lord's intense period of temptation and what it tells us about him, we now turn to another focal point of concentration, namely, what our Lord's concentrated period of temptation teaches us about our experience of temptation. And perhaps someone may ask the question, how do you make the leap from his temptation to ours? And on the beginning, or at the beginning of our study, I want to give a brief word of justification for making that leap.

8:03 And the justification is basically twofold. First of all, in the very nature of Christ's relationship to his people and his people's relationship to him, it is proper to move from his experience, of temptation, to ours. You will remember, those of you who have been here for all of the expositions of this account of Mark thus far, that in the baptism of our Lord Jesus, he is, among other things, formally and publicly identifying himself with his people. From this point on, we must never regard him as a private person. We must behold him in his true capacity. As identified with his people, he identified himself with them publicly and formally by submitting to a sinner's ordinance in the company of sinners, at the hand of sinners, thereby declaring that he was taking upon himself the liabilities of sinners. And no sooner does he take that position, but we see him assaulted by the enemy of the souls.

9:20 Satan himself. It's as though his baptism and this formal identification throws down the gauntlet. Would our Lord identify himself with sinners? He then, as the champion, is attacked by the adversary in this most intense way for forty days in the wilderness.

9:43 Well, the reverse is true when we, by faith, become identified with our Lord. When by the regenerating work of the Spirit, and in response to that regenerating work by our own conscious faith and repentance, we repudiate the devil and become identified with Christ, we also become immediately the objects of peculiar satanic attack. He does not delight to lose his subjects. And according to Acts 26.18, No one is a sinner. No one is ever converted without being brought out from under the dominion of Satan to deliver them from the power of darkness unto God. And the adversary of our Lord then, according to 1 Peter 5.8, becomes our adversary.

10:40 Peter said, your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour. And this is nothing other than an extension of that ancient conflict prophesied in Eden, that there would be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. John Bunyan, as he captures so many biblical principles so vividly in his pilgrim's progress, progress, I'm sorry, that was for our English friends. We find Christian talking to Apollyon.

11:19 And you'll remember one of the things that really got Apollyon furious. He said to Christian, how dare you leave my service for the service of another prince? And you'll remember, those of you familiar with the narrative, that Christian begins to give the reasons as to why he left the service of Apollyon and came into the service of his gracious prince, the Lord Jesus. And after this exchange, Bunyan records Apollyon as saying this, Apollyon then broke out in a grievous rage, saying, I am the enemy of this prince.

12:00 I hate his person, his laws, his people, and I am come out on purpose to withstand you. End quote. I hate his person, his laws, his people. Therefore, I've come, Christian, to withstand you.

12:25 And this forms the first line of justification for what I'm doing this morning. If you've left the ranks of Satan and become identified with Jesus Christ in bonds of faith and love and obedience, you have automatically become the sworn enemy of the devil from your perspective and also from his. But then the second reason for making this. Leap from his temptation to ours is based upon the explicit warrant of several texts in the word of God.

12:59 Surely the Bible and all sensitive reflection upon what the scriptures teach about our Lord's person and the nature of temptation forces upon us the conclusion that there are unique elements in our Lord's temptation that find no parallel. When the devil came to him, he found nothing in him. The uniqueness of his person, the uniqueness of his position demands unique dimensions to his temptation. But granting all of those elements of uniqueness, the Bible is not at all ashamed to bring his temptations and our temptations into the closest connection. Two texts that we looked at in another connection last Lord's Day. Hebrews 2.18 and 4.15.

13:59 In that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to give timely help to those who are tempted. So our temptations and his temptations are by scripture brought into a very close conjunction. And then Hebrews 4.15.

14:23 For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. Tempted like as we are. And his temptations and our temptations are brought into this close proximity. And so this, I submit, is...

Lesson 1: God is Sovereign in Ordering Temptation's Circumstances

14:51 This is the biblical warrant for doing what I'm doing this morning. Having contemplated what the temptations of our Lord tell us about himself, we now consider what this concentrated period of temptation tells us about our temptations. Well, in the light of these principles then, consider with me, as time permits, four very basic lessons about our experience of temptation, set before us in our Lord's experience of temptation. First of all, we must learn to think and even say to ourselves, God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of my temptations. God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of my temptations. Notice the passage. Notice the passage.

15:52 And straightway the Spirit impelled him into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan. The place of intense temptation was the place to which our Lord came, not in carnal haste, not in carnal presumption, but under the impression, compelling ministry of the Holy Spirit. Now, on the one hand, the word of God through James must ever be kept in mind when we take up the subject of our temptations. James chapter 1, these words must always be before us. Verse 12, blessed is the man that endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he shall receive the crown of life. He shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, that is, enticed to sin, I am tempted of God.

17:05 God is directly responsible for this temptation. He said, let no man ever say it, don't think it, don't act as though it were reality. It is not reality. Let no man say when being enticed to sin, God is enticing me.

17:22 God cannot. He cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man. But each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. You'll notice I chose my words carefully.

17:43 We must learn from this passage that God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of my temptation. And though the temptation, comes from the devil, or in our case, as is different from our Lord, may arise from our own remaining corruption, nonetheless, it is precisely because God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of our temptations that we can do what Jesus told us to do. He said in Matthew 26, 41, Watch and pray. That ye enter not into temptations.

18:27 We'll pray to whom? We'll pray to God. And furthermore, he said, When ye pray after this manner, pray ye, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

18:43 Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And bring us not into temptation. If God has nothing to do with ordering the circumstances of the temptations of his people, why should his people both watch and pray that they enter not into temptation?

19:11 If God does not control the circumstances which become the devil's opportunity to tempt, why pray to God that I not be led into it? Why pray as our Lord taught us to pray? Lead us not into temptation. Why pray as our Lord taught us to pray?

19:26 Lead us not into temptation. If God has nothing to do with the circumstances which surround and become the occasion of temptation. Do you feel the force of my question? And as surely as it was the Spirit that brought our Lord by his own mysterious operation upon his holy humanity into the wilderness, and therefore into this concentrated period of temptation, so God in us...

19:56 He is sovereign in this matter of the circumstances of their temptation. Now if I believe that, what will be the practical result? Well, recognizing my weakness and vulnerability, I will pray. And I will pray fervently and frequently, Lord, do not lead me into temptation.

20:24 Do not bring me into a set of circumstances. Do not bring me into a set of circumstances that will result in powerful appeals to my remaining sin, that will result in my coming into confrontation with that wily adversary, the devil, who has slain his millions. Oh God, you know. I know but the little part of it.

20:45 But what I know is enough to make me cry. Oh Lord, lead me not into temptation. I'm weak. I'm vulnerable.

20:54 But oh God, you are sovereign. And you can turn aside that person, that thing, that set of circumstances that would prove my undoing from your throne, Lord. Put forth the arm of your power. And so order my steps that I am not placed in a situation of temptation.

21:15 Furthermore, if that acknowledgement of weakness and vulnerability is genuine, then it will be joined with my intense and constant... ...conscious watchfulness.

21:27 I will watch as well as pray that I enter not into temptation. I will avoid all people and places and circumstances wherever possible, which, as it were, appeal in a peculiar way to my points of vulnerability. I will watch and I will pray. Now the moment of truth comes, when in spite of all my praying and all my watching, I'm brought into a wilderness.

21:57 And I am tempted of the devil. Not as a result of grieving the Spirit, but as a result of being led of the Spirit. I'm brought into a situation where there is made to my remaining sin a powerful enticement, or where there is proposed to my mind a very specious set of reasonings and arguments as to why I...

22:28 ...should take a course that is contrary to the revealed will of God.

22:33 Must I at that point automatically assume, well, I must have grieved the Spirit, I must not have watched enough, prayed enough, I feel that Apollyon is in my path. The presence of Apollyon means that I'm somehow out of the will of God. No. No.

22:50 A thousand times no. If that were true, then we must accuse our Lord of presumption. For He entered a circumstance in which for forty days He was tempted of Satan. Therefore, child of God, you and I must learn to say to ourselves, God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of my temptation.

23:16 Temptation, therefore, should not cause me to panic. The awareness of an unusual concentration of satanic attack upon my mind or spirit is no call. to throw up my hands in despair or to let them drop at my side in the paralysis of false guilt. No, I, like my Lord, may be led of the Spirit into my own howling wilderness, left to feel that Apollyon is there in my path.

23:54 That's one of the great lessons for us as the people of God. We can enter it in the confidence of 1 Corinthians 10, 13. There has no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with that temptation, the very temptation into which He in sovereignty has brought you. He is not the tempter, but He's brought you into the circumstances in which the tempter makes His approach.

Lesson 2: It is Not Sin to Be Sorely Tempted to Sin

24:31 He will, with the temptation, make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. But then there is a second great lesson for us, and it is this. It is not sin for me to be sorely tempted to sin. It is not sin for me to be sorely tempted to sin.

25:02 Our passage informs us, according to verse 13, that for 40 days Jesus was being constantly tempted by Satan. The verb tenses used by Mark underscores that the temptation must never be thought of only in terms of the final assault of that threefold barrage upon the soul of our Lord, recorded by Matthew and Luke. And most of us are familiar with those details. But for 40 days, Mark says, being tempted 40 days in the wilderness,

25:49 the precise nature of that 40-day assault is not recorded, either in Matthew, or in Mark, or in Luke, and certainly not in John. The precise nature of the final assault is set aside. It is set before us. And we can take, as it were, our clue from that final assault.

26:11 And at least, I trust not with carnal impudence or irreverence, have some notion of what it was that the enemy was seeking to do to our Lord throughout the entire 40 days. Our Lord was tempted with real enticement that appealed to His mind and soul and to His flesh. He was tempted to the sin of distrusting God and His providence. If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread.

26:46 In a way unrevealed to us, the Father had not yet made it plain to our Lord that He was to break His fast in the way of God's appointment. Here comes a real temptation to a hungry Christ to be guilty of the sin of distrusting God and His providence. He was tempted to the sin of gratifying God-given appetites out of the will of God. The sin of presuming upon God's promises, cast yourself down and the angels will hold you up.

27:19 He was tempted to the sin of misapplying the promises of God to justify presumption. He was tempted to the sin of idolatry and sacrilege, bow down to me and I'll give you the kingdoms of the world. He was tempted to the sin of avoiding the unpleasant in the will of God. He was tempted to the sin of God by yielding just for a moment to the devil.

27:41 Worship me for a moment. The kingdoms will be yours and you can bypass the cross. Those are at least six of the specific temptations that are recorded in that final threefold onslaught of the devil upon the mind and soul of our Lord. That's real temptation.

28:01 Real proposals to the mind and soul of our Lord. They register in his consciousness. When he looked at the stones, the scripture tells us he looked at them as a hungry man. And when the suggestion came, command these stones to be bread and those stones would have the very resemblance of the little Palestinian loaf.

28:26 Our Lord could make the connection between what bread would feel like in his now gnawing stomach. There was real temptation.

28:37 When the proposal came, bow down to me. Bypass the cross. Bypass the shame. Bypass the agony.

28:46 It was a real proposal of one whom we see in Gethsemane crying out that if there were any other way, it might be revealed. Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass.

29:02 The point I'm making is that the temptation of our Lord was real temptation to real sin. And yet, and yet, the Word of God says, tempted in all points, like as we are, Hebrews 4.15, yet without sin. Paul can write without any fear of contradiction when men would receive the gospel records and read Mark's words forty days, tempted of Satan.

29:34 He's unashamed to write, that he who knew no sin was made sin. For us, dear child of God, you and I must learn the distinction between enticement to sin and the first consent to sin in the mind and the spirit, even if it never breaks out in the actual deed or word of sin. And we must learn that it is not sin for us to be tempted to sin. For no little burden to the real, sensitive Christian, as we said last week, is the reality and the nature of temptation to sin.

30:19 When there is this presentation to the mind and to the soul, this publishing by our own remaining sin or by the devil himself of the way of some escape from the cross, that enticement to gratify, God-given appetites, contrary to the revelation of God's will or the disposition of God's providence, those things are very real. And often the suggestion comes to us in the midst of temptation. It is my wickedness even to be so tempted. Then the one who has been the seducer becomes the accuser. And the very one who has sought to seduce us and has not been able to get the consent of our affections, and wills, turns on us and becomes the accuser and says, how could anyone who is a Christian even be vulnerable to such a suggestion?

31:21 And then he turns the wickedness of his own enticements upon us as a reason why we have no grounds to even regard ourselves as Christians.

31:32 Now, were his enticements to our Lord real? Were they wicked? Is it wicked to distrust God and His providence? Is it wicked to gratify God?

31:43 Given appetites outside the will of God? Is it wicked to presume upon His promises? Misapply the promises? Is idolatry or our idolatry and sacrilege wicked?

31:56 Why, of course they are! And yet it was these proposals that came to our Lord. And they came to Him really, in real forms of words that registered upon the mind of our Lord. And yet the Scripture tells us, though, tempted like as we, yet without sin.

32:20 If the presence of temptation is in itself sin, and the words stick in my throat to even say them, Jesus Christ was a sinner. And if He were a sinner, you and I have no Savior. The Scripture dares to say He was tempted with the same kind of homo eotes there in Hebrews 4.15.

32:56 And whatever disparities there were, I say because of His person and position, He was tempted like as we are. Child of God, you and I will get very, make very little progress in the Christian life if we do not learn this fundamental lesson. It is not sin for me to be tempted to sin. And if you mistake temptation to sin for sin itself, you'll be paralyzed with false guilt and it won't be long before you will really be sinning.

Lesson 3: Intense Temptation is Not Necessarily a Sign of God's Displeasure

33:33 Because a person paralyzed with false guilt is no successful warrior in spiritual battle. And the third thing we learn from this passage about our own temptations is this. It is no necessary indication of God's displeasure to be brought into an extended season of the most intense temptation. It is no necessary indication of God's displeasure to be brought into an extended season of the most intense temptation. We go back to the passage. Straightway the Spirit impelled him, into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan.

34:38 Now follow closely. There are times when because we have failed to watch and failed to pray and have dabbled with what we described and judged to be little sins, that God, as it were, gives us up to an intense period of temptation, gives us up to an intense period of temptation, gives us up to an intense period of temptation, and sometimes even to grievous falls, as a stroke of chastisement for our folly. It's as though God says, All right, you want that forbidden cookie? Go ahead and taste it until it becomes bitter in our mouth, and we want to vomit it out.

35:19 Now that's a biblical principle. That's a truth that anyone who's walked with God for any length of time knows by his own bitter experience. However, this passage teaches, However, this passage teaches, However, this passage teaches, it is no necessary indication of God's displeasure to be brought into an extended season of the most intense temptation. Remember the connection between these verses and the preceding.

35:49 Our Lord came from that pinnacle of personal glory and communion. We may even say out of the crucible of inner, We may even say out of the crucible of inner, Trinitarian mystery. This is my Son, the Beloved One, the Father speaking of Him and to Him. You are my Son, the Spirit coming upon Him, and the Spirit coming upon the God-man, a mystery known only in its depths and fullness by the God-man Himself.

36:25 He comes from that place of the most glorious communion He comes from that place of the most glorious communion with His Father and with the Spirit, with whom He constitutes the one God, with the heavens opened, and the voice of identification and approbation ringing in His ears into the wilderness, wild beast, the devil himself, for one day, two, three, a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, forty days. And I personally believe in reading the passage, there's nothing to indicate that those forty days were marked by the sensible enjoyment of God, by the consciousness of the light of His countenance, but rather that they were totally swallowed up in the agonizing conflict with the adversary who looks at the champion now publicly identified with His people whom He came to save, and said, I will marshal all of my subtlety and power to bring down the champion that I might bring him down and all who are in him. And for forty days and nights all thought of food leaves our Lord, for we read in Matthew and in Luke

37:50 that He fasted during that time as He enters into this hand-to-hand combat with the Prince of Darkness. All the delight is replaced by the agonizing resentment, resistance, all of the sensible enjoyment of God is smothered in this conflict of His soul. Who am I? What am I doing here?

38:15 He had to cling to the word of the living God that still rang in His ear from the days before, You are my Son. Though now there is no sensible enjoyment of my presence, though now there is nothing but the fiendish darkness, of the presence of the adversary, You are my Son. In You I am delighted. Forty days of this, and so with us, and perhaps few disciplines are a greater trial to the child of God than when God allows His child to come into a period of sustained and intensified temptation. It's one thing to have three or four fiery darts hurled at us in a given day. It's another thing to feel that hell is manufacturing fiery darts by the thousands, and to have them hurled upon the soul day in and day out, week in and week out, for a lengthy period of time. Some of us have known what this is.

39:31 Perhaps you've never told another soul. We've known what it is to have proposals to our soul that would have meant bringing a child into a state of bringing into utter disgrace the name that we bore. And yet it was there. We woke up with it in the morning.

39:47 We went to bed with it at night. We cried to God. We wept. We pleaded.

39:51 Perhaps we even fasted. But day after day, week after week, the proposals of the devil were there. They became, as it were, our meat and drink. And we were not demented.

40:07 It was not something that had snapped in our psyche. And God, in his inscrutable wisdom, allowed us to enter a season of intense and sustained temptation, to change the imagery. It's one thing to feel the log-like battering ram of the devil trying to break down the door of our soul, to feel it thump three or four times, and to feel the hinges shake. It's another thing to feel it thump all day long, for a day, for two days, for three, for four, for a week, for two, or longer, until we would almost despair and wonder in the language of the psalmist, has God forgotten to show mercy? And what do we have to lean upon in such times? We have precisely what our Lord had to lean upon, the naked word of God. The naked word of God!

41:09 Had God not said, when standing on the banks of Jordan, you are my son, the beloved one, in you is all my pleasure, and that the heavens opened, and the glory of that experience hardly, as it were, distilling into every fiber of your soul, face to face with the devil in a howling wilderness amidst wild beasts, one week, two weeks, three weeks, 40 days. Was that a sign that the Father had changed his mind, that he was no longer the one in whom he was well pleased? He was never more pleased with him. When stripped of all the sensible delights and comforts of his relationship to the Father, he clung to his way. He clung to the word spoken, you are my son. And that was the thing, you see, that was attacked by the devil, was it not?

42:16 If you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God, if you are what your Father says you are. And our Lord clung to his identity on the basis of the naked word of God. And child of God, you and I must learn that great lesson. Pastor Nichols preached on the temptations of Christ from that perspective some months ago, and I commend the tape of his sermon to you, How Our Lord Dealt with Temptations.

Lesson 4: No Temptation Justifies Indulging Sin

42:49 I am concerned to concentrate on the great principle that Mark gives us in his abbreviated account, namely, it is no necessary indication of God's displeasure to be brought into an extended season of the most intense temptation. And then the fourth and final principle to which I direct your attention this morning is this. No kind , intensity or duration of temptation to commit sin gives me warrant or excuse to indulge sin. No kind, intensity or duration of temptation to commit sin gives me warrant or excuse to excuse to indulge sin. And here again we must learn the lesson of our Lord's wilderness

44:01 temptation. It was the resolute resistance that brought about the defeat of the tempter. Notice the language of Matthew 4 and verse 11. And oh, how this ought to bring comfort to us as the people of God. Then, at the end of the forty days, at the end of the final threefold onslaught on the soul of our Lord, all of this resisted. Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him. Luke tells us in Luke chapter 4 and verse 13, And when the devil had completed, every temptation, he departed from him for a season. It was our Lord's resolute resistance that led to the retreat of the devil. And does that language come to us elsewhere in

45:05 the Bible, applied to us? Yes, it does. Do you remember James' words? James chapter 4 and verse 7, Resist the devil, and he will flee.

45:18 From you. From you. You're not the Son of God, but you are a Son of God. You are in vital union with Christ. And as he fled from our great captain and head when he resisted him, James says, if you resist him in the like manner, he will flee from you. Romans 16, 20, The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet. I thought it was the seed of the woman that shall bruise his head. It is. And I am in union with the seed of the woman. Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. And now, child of God, listen. You who are lovers of your sin, you think this is all nonsense. Think it nonsense. Some of us who are determined to get to heaven, this

46:13 is meat and drink to our souls. For we know without holiness, no man will see the Lord, and without resistance, no man will see the Lord. And we know without holiness, no man will see the Lord. And we know without resisting temptation, there's no holiness. This is a matter of life and death to us. And if it isn't to you, it's because you're blind and dead and lost and ignorant of the very elements of true and saving religion. Child of God, listen. Here is the great lie of the devil. When we've entered into a period of unusually intense and sustained temptation, it's as though that enticement to sin is a monkey on our shoulder.

46:50 The devil comes and says, feed the monkey and he'll leave you. Throw him a banana and he'll go away. And there are times when we fall prey to this great lie of the devil, that the way to get him to leave us is to yield. Is that what James says? Yield to the devil and he will leave you? No! Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Someone has said he's a lion who roars.

47:27 But his teeth were pulled at Calvary. But often we fall before the bluff of his roar. He's the monkey on our back saying, throw me a banana. And we say, finally, let's kick the monkey off the back. And you throw him a banana. Instead of going away, you know what he does? He holds on with two hands and says, if you gave me one, why not two? And rather than submission to temptation by sin, relieving the pressure to sin, it increases it until, alas, even Christians can forge chains with which they go limping the rest of their days. Don't believe the devil's lie. Go to the wilderness. Behold your Lord

48:21 through forty days, resisting, resisting, resisting. And then the final onslaught. It is written. It is written. It is written. Until finally the devil, in frustration, turns to you, and he leaves him for a season. And James says he'll do exactly the same thing to you when you resist him. Peter used his language a little bit differently when he says, be watchful, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. Ah, but you say, pastor, it gets wearisome. You don't know what it's like to be single, and over a lengthy period of time have no husband, no wife. All of my sexual longings and appetites that cry out day after day, week after week. You don't know what it's like. Who says I don't know what it's like? About what I know

49:28 about resisting temptation. Arresting with bodily appetites. What do you know of them? Nothing. I know.

49:46 Stop that cop out.

49:48 Stop wallowing in that self-pity. Have you resisted unto blood? You who secretly indulge your appetites contrary to the will of God? Where you have resisted until sweat drops of blood have been pressed out of your brow and from your pores. That's the argument of the writer to Hebrews. Hebrews 12. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. You, who are tempted to self-pity. Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. Gonna go out

50:36 and eat worms. Nobody understands me. Tempted to that crippling, ugly spirit of self-pity. You make yourself the most unique creature in all the world. You need to resist that.

50:53 It's a form of idol worship. You make an idol of your own peculiar psyche and you bow down to it. Let the world go by. Say, what do you know?

51:02 It's not a matter of what I know. It's a matter of what our Savior knows. Tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. And there are some of you sitting here who in reality, if you'll be honest, you are committing a form of blasphemy by saying, God has so surrounded you with circumstances that make sin a necessity.

51:27 God hasn't given me a wife. So I've got to lust. And I've got to indulge my flesh. God hasn't given me a husband.

51:34 So I've got to do this and got to do that. And God hasn't given me this. My friend, if you're a child of God, you don't want knowingly to blaspheme your God who has redeemed you in Christ.

51:50 No temptation of whatever kind, however intense, however long its duration, is ever a warrant or an excuse for sin. Our Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ has paved the way of continuous resistance until the enemy flees. But isn't that the language of Ephesians 6?

52:14 We are to resist and having done all, we are to stand and quench all the fiery darts of the evil. Whether they come in threes, thirties, or three thousands, we are in the shield of faith. We are to resist all the fiery darts of the evil. And frankly, the whole conditioning climate of this generation doesn't do much to make such Christian soldiers.

52:46 A generation that's learned to run from every little twitch of pain to the latest painkiller. A generation that's run from reality by booze and drugs and alcohol and illicit sex. And a generation that has more sophisticated, forms of escape in the weekend cottage and in the boat upon the ocean. Such a generation is ill-prepared in a wilderness with very little of the felt presence of God to resist and resist and resist until the devil flees.

53:23 But my friend, I don't care what this generation has done to leave us ill-prepared in common grace. We better get enough special grace to be like that or we won't make it. We better make it to heaven.

53:39 Because no one who lives in a pattern of sin as the course of his life is going to make it to heaven. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. And no one avoids such a path of willful, deliberate sin who does not learn how to resist temptation. Well, I say these are four very vital lessons about our temptations that we can learn from this concentrated, period of temptation in the life of our Lord Jesus.

Summary of Lessons and Call to Action

54:12 Let me just give them to you as we close. First, God is sovereign in ordering the circumstances of my temptation. And that God is my loving Father who knows me. It is no sin, it is not sin for me to be tempted to sin.

54:32 Thirdly, it is no necessary indication of God's displeasure to be tempted very intensely and very extensively. And there is no kind intensity or duration of temptation that gives me warrant or excuse for sin. Dear people of God, if we believe these things, would it make any difference?

54:59 Will it make any difference? May God grant that it will make a difference. This is gospel, that we have a Savior who triumphed. Not only triumphed on our behalf, but showed us the way to triumph in His strength.

55:15 May God grant that seeing Him, we will not only praise Him and trust Him as our great champion and conqueror, but as the scripture says, He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself so to walk, even as He walked. May God give us grace so to walk. And if you're not in Him, my friend, you're still in the clutches of the devil, maybe that's why you think all of this is a tempest in a teapot. You say, for the life of me, I can't understand what that preacher's all worked up about.

55:50 Well, my friend, it's because you're still the dupe of the devil. You determine to give yourself no rest until you know you belong to Christ, and then you believe there's a devil, and you believe he's got your number, too, and you believe he's out to get you. And he will say to you as he did to Christian, I hate your prince. I hate his laws and his people, I've come forth to withstand you.

56:14 And the devil will be something more than just a medieval concept.

56:20 Oh, that you might flee to Christ, our great Deliverer and Conqueror, and find in Him the salvation offered to needy, helpless sinners.

Concluding Prayer

56:30 May God give you grace so to do. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You for our Lord Jesus Christ. We marvel that He who knew nothing, from the very beginning,

56:57 but the awe-inspired adoration of angels and cherubim and seraphim, the undimmed glory, fellowship with His Father, should come to our condition, should enter that wilderness under the guidance of the Spirit, and there permit the foul fiend of hell to propose such wicked things to His holy mind.

57:28 Lord, Lord Jesus, we worship You for the depths of Your voluntary humiliation and suffering for us. We worship You for Your holy resolve to do Your Father's will. We worship You for conquering on our behalf and for teaching us how to conquer in Your strength. Write Your word upon our hearts, even as You've promised to do as one of the great blessings of the covenant sealed in Your own name.

57:59 Lord, Lord Jesus, be our strength in the midst of our temptations. Forgive, forgive, we pray, the ease with which we've been able to rationalize our indulgences, the ease with which we've been able to throw, as it were, bananas to the monkey that has been upon our back at any given period. Oh, give us, Lord Jesus Christ, the resolution of Your own holy will, as seen in the passage we've studied these past two Lord's Days. Give us the strength of Your Spirit.

58:38 Hear our cry. Receive our praise. Because we come, oh, our Lord Jesus Christ, desiring to please You and serve You as we ought. Amen.