12 Why Jesus Rejected Satan's Kingdom Offer (Matthew 4:8-11)

Speaker: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the twelfth talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew, and we're going to be studying the third temptation of Jesus, which is Matthew 4, verses 8 through 11. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find them by going to the website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 12. Thanks so much for joining me today. Well, we are looking at the third and the last temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and let me just start by reviewing the setting of these temptations. You'll recall that as Matthew tells the story, we have just met Jesus. In the first two chapters, we learned about his miraculous birth and how God protected him as an infant and a child. Then in chapter three we met John the Baptist, who functioned as the herald who announced the coming of the king. And then we finally get to meet Jesus when as his first official act he submits himself to the baptism of John. At his baptism the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended upon him and remained on him in some visible dove like form, and he heard a voice from heaven declare him to be the beloved son of God. After these dazzling supernatural displays that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, Jesus is not immediately crowned and placed on the throne in Jerusalem, rather he is led into the wilderness where he goes without food for forty days and nights and is tempted by the devil. And this tension lies behind all the temptations. On the one hand, Jesus has been powerfully confirmed as the Son of God, the Messiah. On the other hand, God has put him in a place where he might starve to death and where he is facing hardship and deprivation. He has been assured by God that he has this glorious destiny as the Messiah, and yet right now God is asking him to suffer. Jesus knows that right now God wants him to be in the wilderness going hungry and being tempted by Satan. Satan wants to destroy Jesus personally, but more than that, he wants to disqualify him to be the Messiah. Yet while Satan wants to destroy God's plan of salvation, God has a greater, deeper purpose for these temptations. God wants to demonstrate that Jesus is in fact qualified and worthy to be the Messiah. Furthermore, as we talked about in the last podcasts, God has deliberately set up the circumstances of these temptations to echo the story of Israel's journey in the wilderness. Like Israel, Jesus is led by God into the wilderness. Like the nation of Israel, Jesus is left by God to go hungry. Like Israel, Jesus is led by God for a time period of forty, forty years for the nation of Israel, forty days for Jesus. Like Israel, Jesus is being tested in the wilderness, and like Israel, Jesus has received miraculous assurances from God. Israel was promised that God would lead them to the promised land. They witnessed the plagues in Egypt, including the Passover and the parting of the Red Sea. Likewise at his baptism, Jesus witnessed the opening of the heavens, the descending of the Spirit, and the voice of God confirming him as the Son. Like Israel, Jesus must confront the tension between the great promises God has given him, the signs God has given him, and the present hardship he finds himself in. I think Jesus shows he understands this parallel between his situation and the nation of Israel by quoting from a particular sermon of Moses. After wondering for forty years, Israel was poised to enter the promised land, and Moses gave them one final sermon summarizing all the things they were supposed to have learned in their wilderness journey. That's recorded in the book of Deuteronomy. And Jesus quotes from this sermon and only this sermon when he responds to Satan, and by doing so I think he shows that he understands that Israel faced the same issues he is now facing. And God set up the testing of Jesus to strongly remind us of Israel's testing to teach us and show us that Jesus is succeeding where Israel failed. To be the Messiah, Jesus must not only choose to willingly die in our place on the cross, he must also keep and fulfill the covenant that Israel failed to keep. Israel was called to be a blessing to themselves and to the world by being faithful to the covenant, but they failed to remain faithful, and they blessed neither themselves nor the world. Now Jesus is called to be a blessing to himself and the world, and he will succeed. He is the true Israel. He will fulfill the hopes of Israel and bring blessings to all the nations who trust him. For each temptation, I am seeking to answer three questions. Why is the choice wrong? Why is the choice attractive to Jesus? What's tempting about it? And then how does Jesus respond to it? And let's look at the third one today. This is Matthew four verses eight through eleven. Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Let's start by talking about what Satan is not asking Jesus to do. He is not asking for Jesus' complete loyalty. This is not a request that Jesus switch sides. Most translations read something like bow down and worship, and that's a little bit misleading. Worship in modern American usage suggests this connotation of allegiance, loyalty, obedience, service, giving your life to someone in a way that people ought only to give to God. But that's not what Satan is asking Jesus to do. Satan is not asking for loyalty or allegiance or service. He's not asking Jesus to worship him in the way we think of worshiping God. Satan is simply asking for a physical act of respect or homage. Satan is asking Jesus to fall down before him. This is the physical act of touching your forehead to the ground, perhaps kissing his feet. It's a physical way to pay respect or homage to someone, the kind of respect we would pay a king. So the word translated bow down refers to this physical act of prostrating yourself as a gesture of respect. Now, when applied to God, that respect is complete and total, but this word is also used of bowing down before men, and in those contexts the respect is not the total kind of allegiance we give to God. Let me give you two examples where this word doesn't refer to the kind of allegiance we give to God, but simply to a respect. This is Revelation three nine, and this is written to the church in Philadelphia. Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie, I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and make them know that I have loved you. Now that word translated bow down at your feet is the same word we have in Matthew four. Matthew four could have been translated bow down at my feet. What's significant about this passage for our purposes is that Jesus is saying, at least I think it's Jesus in Revelation, not quite sure about that, but I think it's him, and he's saying that he's going to make heretics bow down at your feet, that is the feet of the people who make up the Church of Philadelphia. So we'd have to ask the question, would God ever make people worship other people, other human beings the way they're supposed to worship God? And I don't think so. That seems very out of character for a God who repeatedly says, You shall have no other gods before me. I don't think he would make even heretics worship people as God. So that seems much more likely than that Revelation 3 is talking about a symbolic physical act of respect that one person would show another who is superior to them in some way. So it's not referring to submitting your life to another person in worship the way we submit to God, but to the kind of respect or submission you would grant a king. Let me give you another example. This is Mark chapter fifteen nineteen. Jesus is in the custody of the Roman soldiers, and this is before his crucifixion. They're mocking him, they're beating him, and in that context we read this. They kept beating his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling and bowing before him. That word bowing before him is our same word again. Clearly, in this context, the Roman soldiers are not worshiping Jesus as they would God, they're mocking him, they're toying with him, they're paying homage to him as they would to a king to make fun of his claim to kingship. It's an example of someone performing this physical act of homage or respect without the total allegiance, loyalty, and worship implied in God. And in this case with the Roman soldiers, they don't even mean it. They don't even have the inward attitude of respect that should accompany the action. My first piece of evidence then is that the word does not have to mean the total kind of worship or allegiance or loyalty we give to God. My second reason for believing that Satan is not asking Jesus to switch sides is because the temptation is more compelling if Satan is only asking for respect. It's difficult for me to imagine Jesus wanting to switch sides and join forces with the bad guys. I find it hard to believe that that would be seriously enticing or tempting in any way, especially given the alternative, which I'm going to explain in a minute. So Satan is asking Jesus to perform the physical act of bowing down before him in exchange for the kingdoms of the world. Why is this tempting? What is attractive or compelling about paying Satan a momentary physical act of respect? Well, I think the compelling feature of the temptation is the promise that Satan dangles before Jesus. Satan offers to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and to make his offer more enticing, he shows them to Jesus. Now let's think about why that would be so attractive to Jesus. As the Messiah, exercising authority over the kingdoms of the earth is his primary mission. And Satan's promise is attractive because ruling over the earth is a primary, fundamental longing of Jesus' heart. Now why do I say that? Everything Jesus came to do is wrapped up in being the Messiah, being God's anointed Christ, the Davidic King who will fulfill the Old Testament promises, the Davidic King who will establish God's reign and rule over all the nations of the earth in righteousness forever. That's what it means to be the Messiah. That's been promised to Jesus. He was confirmed to be the Messiah at His baptism. His death and resurrection not only establish our place in the kingdom of God, they establish His place as Messiah, as King of kings and Lord of Lords, the head of the church, the one to whom all things will be put in subjection and the one true king. Knowing that this is his destiny as the Messiah, he must have longed for it. It was his mission. It must have figured into his longings and desires. Insofar as he desired God's will and purpose for his life, he would have desired the fulfillment of this promise to rule over the kingdoms of the earth. The second feature that would make this attractive is not only does Jesus long for it, God's promise to give it to him. The prophecies of the Old Testament predict that God will establish his rule on earth and he will do that through the Messiah. Forty days earlier, when Jesus was baptized, he heard a voice from heaven saying, This is my son, and I argued that the Son of God is a title for the Messiah. So he just heard it confirmed that he is the Messiah, the one standing to inherit the throne of David, to be king over all the world, and to rule a kingdom that will last forever and ever. That's what it means to be God's son, and Jesus as a student of the Old Testament would know that. God has promised to establish his rule through the Messiah, and he has testified that Jesus is the Messiah who's going to establish that rule. So Satan is appealing to a fundamental longing of Jesus' heart and one that he has a right to long for. He has a God given desire for it because God has promised to give it to him. Now God promised to give Jesus authority and rule over all the earth and all creation, but to realize that promise, Jesus is going to have to suffer and die. To claim the promise God has for him, Jesus had to face Calvary. He had to be beaten, spit upon, mocked, betrayed, tortured, and die a horrible, brutal death. God's plan to fulfill his promise involves Jesus suffering and dying on the cross. Now again, scholars like to debate how much of the plan did Jesus know at various points in his life. My personal opinion is that he knew it all. I suspect his understanding of the Old Testament far surpasses ours, and that by this point he'd read the Old Testament, he'd studied it, he knew that all those passages about the suffering servant applied to the Messiah, and he now knows for sure he is the Messiah. Even if he didn't know the full scope of the suffering ahead, he has just spent forty days in the wilderness without food. He is not starting off this path of Messiahship in the lap of luxury. He is not in a palace filled with servants. So even if he didn't know the full extent of the suffering that was coming, he could look back on the last forty days and go, this isn't going to be easy. So Satan is offering to fulfill God's promise to Jesus without the suffering. Satan is appealing to a fundamental longing of Jesus' heart, a longing he has a right to expect, a longing which he knows will be fulfilled through hardship, and Satan is saying, I'll give it to you all now without the pain. Essentially he's saying, Look, Jesus, I know you want to rule over these kingdoms, and you know, we both know that you're gonna win this battle. One day you're gonna rule over all of them anyway. So I'll tell you what, I'll just give them to you now. I'll abdicate to you. All you have to do is kiss my feet. You don't have to suffer, you don't have to die, you don't have to go hungry, no cross, no Gethsemane, your friends aren't going to betray you. I'll just give it to you now. This one little harmless act of respect is all I ask. A simple gesture of thanks and gratitude, and you don't even have to mean it. I mean, God's gonna make you suffer for your kingdom, but not me. I'm so kind and benevolent and generous, I'll give it to you now. Just fall down at my feet, just this once. Well, you can see how appealing that would be. Satan is offering Jesus the very thing he longs for without the necessity of undergoing the suffering that God's plan involves. What a deal. How could he refuse? Why would he refuse? I mean, Satan's going to give up without a fight. That has to be very enticing. Now I know what you're thinking, but Satan can't really give him the kingdoms of the earth. So this isn't a bona fide offer, this is a sham, this is a bluff. Well, I think there's good reason to believe that Satan could deliver on his promise. First, in the parallel account in Luke, Satan says this in Luke four, six and seven, and the devil said to him, I will give you all this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you worship before me, it shall be yours. That implies that Satan has been given the authority to hand this kingdom over. Second, Paul calls Satan the god of this world in Second Corinthians 4 4, and that again implies that Satan has some kind of authority over the world. And finally, I think Jesus' response indicates that he believes this is a bona fide offer. So let's look at Jesus' response. Why doesn't he take Satan up on this offer? What's wrong for him in taking this deal? As he does in all three temptations, Jesus quotes from Moses' sermon in Deuteronomy. But before we look at the passage he quotes, let's set the stage for what's going on in Deuteronomy. I want to back up to Deuteronomy six one through three. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. The focus of this section is on the future. Israel is about to cross over into the land that God has promised to give them, and this is something God has been promising for a long time now, and they are on the brink of it being fulfilled. The Israelites would like their days to be prolonged. They would like things to go well in this new land. They would like to have peace and prosperity and fruitfulness, and that's exactly what God is promising to give them if they will keep his commandments and his statutes. The previous generation was not allowed to enter the promised land because they were rebellious and unbelieving and they turned away from the Lord, and that's why they wandered so long in the wilderness. Moses is now reminding the next generation, the present generation, that they're going to face the same kinds of temptation. They're going to get in the land, and the question will be, will they be faithful to the Lord or not? Will they remain faithful to him or will they turn away to other gods? And that brings us to a very famous passage in Deuteronomy. This is six four. You often hear this referred to as the Shema, which is the first word of this verse. This is Deuteronomy six four through sixty six. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. Let's think about what it means that the Lord is one. I think it's actually quite relevant to the reason Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy, and I want to spend some time thinking about it. If you start studying this verse, you'll quickly discover that Jesus and the scribes had a little debate over this verse. We find this in Mark twelve, twenty eight through thirty four. And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another. This is Jesus and the scribes disputing, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, The most important is Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other beside him, and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as one's self is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. Now this scribe is most likely a Pharisee, we don't know that for sure, but I think it's likely that he is. And if he is a Pharisee, that tells us that not all the Pharisees were all bad. But this story also tells us that Jesus was not always teaching things that were brand new and radical. Jesus and this scribe agree about what the Old Testament is saying, and both are pleased to find this common understanding in each other. Since Jesus implies that the scribe has a wise and intelligent understanding of the Old Testament, let's notice what the scribe says. This is Matthew twelve thirty two again. And the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher, you have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him. The scribe is explaining the significance of what it means to say that the Lord is one, and he restates that significance as there is no other beside him. The Lord alone is God. The Lord alone is uniquely God. The Lord is the one and only God, and there is no one else beside him. I think that's the significance of the statement in Deuteronomy, and the scribe has rightly understood it. That's why Moses goes on to tell us to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. If the Lord were one among many, then our hearts could be divided. I could give the Lord some of my heart and some of my allegiance and some of my attention, but I need to reserve some of it for these other gods. But Yahweh alone is God, and there is no one beside him, therefore I must love him with all my heart, soul, and strength. I can reserve nothing for some other God. And you can see how this fits the context of what Moses is saying in Deuteronomy. As they go into the land, they are to be faithful to the Lord alone. Continuing on in Deuteronomy, this is six six through nine, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart, you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Well you can see how all this follows. It's important that they remain faithful to Yahweh alone. It's important that they take the Lord seriously, that they obey him and listen to him. Therefore it's important that they remember all the things he's commanded them to do and take steps to ensure that they remember them. Going on in Deuteronomy six, ten through twelve. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Israel's about to enter into the promised land, and once they are in and settled, it's going to be really easy to forget how they got all this goodness in the first place. They could easily forget that they did not work for the abundance of this land. They could forget that they received all this prosperity from the hand of the Lord. And one way of forgetting is to think we did all this on our own, and Moses warns them against that. But another way to forget that everything they have comes from God is to start thinking that it came from other gods instead. If they forget it all comes from the Lord, then they could forget that the Lord is one, they could forget that there is no other God beside him, and start serving and worshiping other gods and idols of the land that they're entering. Now that brings us to the verse that Jesus is quoting. This is Deuteronomy six, thirteen through fifteen. It is the Lord your God you shall fear, him you shall serve, and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people who are around you, for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God, lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. Now here we see the language Jesus is quoting. We see Moses addressing this fundamental issue of who are you going to worship? This topic is a central theme in Moses' sermon. The sermon starts back in chapter five by repeating the Ten Commandments, and remember how that starts. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness or anything that is in the heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. That was Deuteronomy five, six through ten. The first thing God tells them through this sermon of Moses is you shall have no other gods. Don't worship idols, don't worship images, I am a jealous god, and if you do worship other gods there's going to be seriously bad consequences. We see this same theme again in Deuteronomy eight. This is eight, seventeen through twenty. You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to the to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. Well, this is the same idea that we saw in chapter six. There is this great danger that they will get into the land and forget that God is the one who gave them all the abundance they have, that they didn't earn this wealth through their own power and might, it is a gift of God. And if you forget that all this comes from God, there's a great danger that you start worshiping other gods and turning to them, and if that happens you'll perish. Moses comes back to this theme in chapter eleven. This is Deuteronomy eleven, sixteen and seventeen. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you. So here again he's picking up this theme again, and Moses is warning them, Don't let your hearts be deceived, such that you turn away and worship other gods, if you do, you'll perish. So we saw how Moses started the sermon, how he weaves this theme in and out of it, and then listen to how he ends it. This is Deuteronomy thirty, starting in verse fifteen. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live. Loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give them. So Moses concludes his sermon with the same theme. You face this choice. It's a choice between blessing and curse. The blessing comes by obeying the Lord and following him and him alone. The curse comes if you turn away and start worshiping other gods. Moses began his sermon with this warning and he ends it with this warning, and he sprinkles that warning throughout his sermon, including the part that Jesus quotes. I think Jesus could have quoted any of these sections because they're all making the same point. But he chose to quote Deuteronomy six hundred thirteen, and let me remind you of what that said. This is six thirteen through fifteen. It is the Lord your God you shall fear, him you shall serve, and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you, for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God, lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. Now I said that Jesus quoted six thirteen of Deuteronomy, but he didn't quote the precise language. I think it's pretty clear that this is the passage he means, but there's a sense in which he's quoted all these passages. He's expressed it like a summary quotation that captures the essence of the warnings in the sermon. The message is you shall worship God alone. You shall not worship other gods, your destiny depends on it. Now today this might not seem like much of a warning because most modern societies are atheistic rather than polytheistic, and many people grow up in a religion and stick with it their whole life. Why is it so hard for Israel to avoid worshiping other gods? I think the problem with that thinking is that it thinks of worship or defines worship too narrowly. We think of worship as that singing stuff that we do on Sunday mornings, and I could go my whole life without singing to another god, no problem. But that's a very trivial view of worship. As I said, the word worship here means to bow down or prostrate yourself. It's the kind of thing you do before a king. You kiss his feet. By bowing down, you're communicating your understanding of your relationship to the king. He is your superior and you are dependent on him. You need him to take care of you, or at least take care of the country that you live in so that you can live your life in peace. This is particularly true with our relationship with God. When we worship God or bow down before him, we are saying we need him. We are saying that he is superior to us and we are dependent on him. We are acknowledging that all we have comes from his hand. Worship then is not the singing that we do on the outside. Worship is a state of our hearts, our attitudes. It is a deep fundamental inner attitude that I recognize who I am in relationship to God. I acknowledge that He is my creator, that He alone is God, and that I am utterly dependent on His grace and mercy. I bow my knee to Him and I acknowledge that He is my provider, my creator, my Savior, and my Lord. Further, we acknowledge that He alone is our God, and there is no one else to which we ought to bow or should bow. His commands and His alone are the ones we seek to obey. When He says something is good and something else is evil, we listen and agree and adjust our lives accordingly. There is no one else we owe allegiance or honor to because He and He alone is the source of life. If Yahweh does not help us, then no one will. That's what's at stake here when we talk about worshiping Yahweh alone. Now all the pieces of this puzzle should start fitting together. To worship another god is to say to that god, You are my superior and you are my source of life, and I will serve you if you take care of me. Now the Israelites frequently did not abandon Yahweh altogether. They had included him on their list of possible gods, but he became one among many. When times got rough and hardships hit, they were willing to look to any and all gods who might take care of them. And Moses in Deuteronomy is warning against that. He's warning them to look to God and God alone. God will take care of you if you worship him, but if you believe the lie that there is some other God out there who's going to take care of you and give you what you need and what you want, then God's going to cut you off. Let's take all that understanding back to Matthew. Let me read the temptation again, Matthew four, eight through eleven. Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold the angels came and were ministering to him. Now with that background, you can now see why I argued that Satan is offering Jesus the kingdoms of the world without the suffering. Kingdoms are places that are ruled by kings. Kingdoms are places where someone has dominion and authority over a nation of or a peoples. Satan is showing Jesus their glory. This is the glory and honor that comes to the one who rules a kingdom. Luke adds this in his account, this is Luke chapter four verses five through seven. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. Luke says, I will give all this authority to you. The essence of the temptation is rule and kingship. Satan is offering Jesus the same thing that God has promised to give him as the Messiah. God has proclaimed him to be his son, his Messiah, who will inherit dominion and be given authority over all the kingdoms of the world. We see this language in the visions of Daniel, this is Daniel seven thirteen. I saw in the night visions, and behold with the clouds of heavens there came one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. That passage has the same concepts that Satan discusses with Jesus ruling over a kingdom, having dominion and glory, and Daniel tells us that a son of man, who I believe is a reference to the Messiah, will be given dominion and glory and an everlasting kingdom over all the kingdoms of the world. As the Messiah, Jesus can expect that this is his destiny, and Satan is offering to give it to him now, without going to the cross, without all the suffering. Is Satan telling the truth? Well, I think he's at least telling the half truth. He does have a kind of authority over this world. Several times in his gospel John calls Satan the ruler of this world, Paul calls Satan the god of this world, and that suggests that Satan has been given a limited authority to deceive the nations, but it's limited. He can only deceive those God allows to be deceived, and he has power insofar as God allows it. He has some ability to fulfill this promise, but think about it, it's a limited, cheap imitation of the promise that God has in mind. Satan's kingdom that he has to offer over would be filled with corrupt and rebellious sinners. God's kingdom, when God hands it over, will be filled with the elect, those who have been forgiven, cleansed, and glorified. Satan can only offer a kind of shabby, cheap imitation of the promise that God has made. But God has made it clear that before Jesus is given this reward, this crown and this destiny, he's going to have to walk a very hard road. He's hungry, he's weak, he's probably emaciated, and Satan is saying, look, we can skip all this suffering. I'll give you the easy road to glory. I want you to have all that glory. We both know you're going to win in the end. We both know what you're at destiny. Just acknowledge me. Acknowledge my place and authority. I'm the only one who can give you this easy road to glory. All you have to do is kiss my feet. And Jesus says, Leave me, and he quotes Deuteronomy 6 13. In essence, he says, Look, there is only one source of life. There is only one to whom I will bow my knee. There is only one God to be worshipped. God is one and there is no one beside him. So Jesus believes that God will give him his inheritance. If God wants Jesus to achieve that inheritance through suffering, then that is what Jesus will do. He's not going to turn to anyone or anything else that promises an easier road because God alone is the source of every good thing. Idolatry is looking to anyone or any other thing than God to meet your needs. To serve other gods is idolatry. Idolatry is looking to someone or something else other than God to meet your needs. And we have all kinds of gods that we think are going to meet our needs and fulfill us and grant us life. We look to resume stars and health and career and money and wealth and romance and drugs and self-esteem and food and beauty, physical fitness. We look to all those things and we think that's what's really going to fulfill me. But to look to them to meet your needs is idolatry just as much as making an offering to Baal. Idolatry is looking to anyone or anything other than the one true living God, creator of heaven and earth, to meet your needs and fulfill the desires of your heart. So for Jesus to bow down to Satan would be to look to Satan rather than God to grant the longing of his heart. And now we can see why he didn't bow down. It would be idolatry no matter how you cut it. It would be looking to someone other than God to find the blessings that God has promised him. It's wrong and it's an act of unbelief. It would be trying to take a shortcut to get God's blessings without walking the path God has called you to walk. It's like saying, Well, I do want all that life and goodness and all those things you promise God, but I want them on my terms, and my terms are the easy way out. My terms mean no pain, no struggle, no testing, no hard times, just smooth sailing, peace and prosperity all the days of my life. But it's looking for life and holiness and God's blessing in the wrong places. It's thinking you can have all the things God promises without obedience and without trusting God. Now it must have been really tempting. It must have been very attractive to have Satan say, I'm going to give you the ends without the means. I'm going to give it to you. Just look to me, count on me instead of God. And therein lies the problem. You can't look to anyone or anything other than God to meet your needs. Okay, one more point I want to make. Why is God so jealous? Why does he demand our undivided service and trust? Because he's the only true God. Idolatry is not just wrong, it's foolish. God and God alone has the power to truly bless us. No God but God. God can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts and he loves us too much to let us settle for counterfeit blessing. Idols do not offer the real thing. They might give us a cheap, shabby facsimile of it, but it won't be the real thing and it won't fully satisfy. And this would have been very true for Jesus, because the kingdom Satan could have offered Jesus would have been made by men, corrupted by evil, broken by rebellion and death, and populated by sinful, rebellious people. Is that the earth that Jesus is going to inherit and rule over? No. In Revelation we read about the kingdom Jesus will inherit. It is the new Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth, constructed solely by the hand of God. A Jerusalem that comes down from heaven, undefiled, untouched by the fall, pure, redeemed, and cleansed. A Jerusalem that does not decay, does not turn to rubble, that lasts forever and ever, and is filled with people who know and reflect the glory of God. What Satan had to offer could never compare to what God had in store. It was just a cheap, shabby imitation. All right, let's wrap this up by looking at the three temptations as a whole, just briefly. I think these temptations confront us with the relationship between the past, the present, and the future. We can look to the past and we find good reasons to trust in God. We can see in history how God has cared for his people, and we can remember times in our own lives where God has acted for us and intervened in our lives. And we can look to the future and we can see the hope and the glorious and marvelous promises he has made. We can see a day when we will finally be freed from futility and death and sin and evil, when every tear will be wiped away, death will be no more, and everything will be put right. But now is the sticky point. Now we see suffering, we see tribulations, we see tragedies and problems, we see loss and pain, we wrestle with the fact that we suffer, we struggle with the fact that we are not the people we want to be, and we don't yet have what we need, and the promises seem to be a long time in coming. In the face of this lack and this delay, we have to decide who we're going to trust. And in his sermon, Moses tells us how to face the hardships of today. He says, remember God's faithfulness in the past and remember God's promises for the future. And in that way, you will persevere in the faith. When we are lacking and needy and suffering in the present, we're tempted to think, oh, if I only had this need met now, then I'd be okay. If I only had this bread in my hands right now, I'd thrive. But remember the faithfulness of God in the past and the promises of God for the future. Life does not come from having bread in hand now. Having bread now may solve today's immediate problem, but there's going to be another problem tomorrow. We won't find life because we have everything we need right now in this world. We find life when we depend on God because He alone is the source of life, and I should follow Him even if He leads me through a wilderness with no bread. Likewise, when we're lacking and needy in the present, we're tempted to think that God has to prove Himself to us. We're tempted to withhold our trust until God comes through with what we think we need. Well, what should we do? As Moses advises, remember the faithfulness of God in the past and remember his promises for the future. God has nothing to prove to us. We have every reason to trust him. He sometimes takes us through the wilderness of going without precisely so that we learn and remember to trust him. And finally, when we're lacking and needy in the present, we are tempted to turn to someone else or something else to meet that need. We think we need a better God or someone more reliable who's going to meet our need now in an easier way. But again, remember the faithfulness of God in the past and his promises for the future. There is no one else to turn to, and we have every reason to stick with God and God alone. God has shown himself faithful and trustworthy, and he always keeps his promises. These are the lessons that the nation of Israel failed to learn in the wilderness. Now certainly probably a few individuals did learn the lesson, but as a nation they failed to learn them. They could not see beyond their present circumstances to rely on the promises of God. Despite God's many demonstrations of his care and his provision, they failed to remember how he had provided for them. Jesus, on the other hand, embraced and learned and lived out those lessons. He succeeded where Israel failed, and in doing so, he demonstrated that he is uniquely qualified and worthy to be the Messiah. I think God intends us to see these parallels between the nation of Israel in the wilderness and the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is called to take the path of faithful suffering on his journey to the throne, and he is faithful in every way. By his actions he shows how fitting it is for him to be the Messiah. Jesus learned of the lessons Israel failed to learn, and he is the true Son of Israel who brings their hopes to fruition. And finally, these are the same lessons you and I must learn in our journey of faith. We're in the same situation. We are caught in the tension between the past, the present, and the future. Our situation is a lot like Israel in the wilderness. In Israel's past was the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the pillar and the cloud that led them, the manna and the quail, the sweet water, and the voice from Sinai. In Israel's future was the promised land, but their present was marching through a wilderness facing a lack of food and water. And Jesus' past was the circumstances of his birth, God's care for him in Egypt, the voice at his baptism and the spirit descending and remaining on him. In his future was the promise of dominion and authority over all the kingdoms of the earth, but right now he was starving and hungry in the wilderness, and the cross is still before him. In our past is the coming of Jesus, the miracles he performed, the cross and the resurrection, not to mention all the stories of the Old Testament, and God's work in our individual lives. In our future is the second coming and the fulfillment of all the promises of the gospel. But right now, our present is living in a fallen sinful world among fallen sinful people and facing our own sin and rebellion. God often requires us to go without and to suffer hardship. What are we to do when that happens? Remember the faithfulness of God in the past and his promises for the future. In short, we need to learn the lessons of the wilderness. God has us in the wilderness to learn the most important lessons of all. God and God alone is the source of life. God does not need to prove himself to us, and we should stop demanding that he do so. And there is no other God to turn to. No one in the universe and nothing in the world can give us life if God does not give it to us. God has promised us life if we continue to trust him, and God always keeps his promises. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means but how we figure it out. Your podcast feed may be limited to the last 20 or so episodes, but you can hear all the previous episodes on my website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com. It is an ad-free, spam-free website. There are only podcasts and Bible study resources. It's all free and it's designed to help you improve your skills and understanding. If you want to thank me, please leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. Subscribe to the mailing list and the podcast, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.