#5 The Temptation of Jesus
Series: Mark
Chuck Sligh
January 19, 2020
NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives.
TEXT: Mark 1:9-13 – And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. 10 And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: 11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 12 And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. 13 And he was there in the wilderness forty days, being tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.”
INTRODUCTION
Illus.– A three-year-old entered the kitchen when his mother was busy elsewhere. She had told him not to get into the cookies, but in her absence, he pulled a kitchen chair over to the counter and climbed up on it. Then he took the lid off the cookie jar and had just gotten a cookie into his mouth when his mother entered the room and demanded to know what he was doing. The three-year-old looked at her with big, innocent eyes and said, “I just climbed up here to smell the cookies, and my tooth got caught on one of them.”
We laugh at the little boy’s struggle with temptation, but temptation is a serious matter.
Today we’re going to talk about the temptation of Christ, the most monumental spiritual battle in history.
You will remember that Mark’s Gospel is the shortest and the most direct of all the gospels, and this is startlingly evident in the temptation of Christ. Matthew tells a much-expanded version of the story, spanning 11 verses, and Luke tells it in 9 verses.
The economy of words in Mark is true to form for him…he tells it in only two verses, verses 12-13. But Mark’s purpose and audience were different than Matthew’s and Luke’s. Mark is more about getting quickly to the larger point than the Matthew and Luke. And yet Mark manages to tell us some details not found in the other two gospels.
Mark and Luke concentrate more on three particular temptations and serve as templates on how we too can overcome temptation by using God’s Word against Satan. Mark forgoes this practical application and sticks to the main thrust of his gospel, which is to prove that Jesus is the Son of God who has authority over sickness, the elements, life and death itself, and most of all, Satan and his demonic forces.
As we work through verses 12-13, virtually every phrase is charged with significance, so let’s examine them one by one.
I. FIRST, NOTICE THE WORD “IMMEDIATELY.”
This is one of Mark’s favorite words. Of the 79 times it is found in the New Testament, 42 are in Mark alone.
Mark uses the word here in verse 12 to help us see the immediacy for Jesus to accomplish the task given to Him by God the Father. He comes up out of the water; hears the voice of the Father’s expressing His approval of the Son and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.
On paper this sounds pretty mundane, but to Jesus that day, it was amazing and must have been emotionally exhilarating. And IMMEDIATELY, Jesus is whisked away by the Spirit to face the power of Satan over a 40-day period. Jesus doesn’t get to bask in the joy of that mighty approval and anointing of his baptism experience. Immediately, He is propelled to the wilderness to take the offensive against temptation and evil instead of avoiding them.
II. NEXT, NOTICE THE WORD “DROVE” IN VERSE 12 – “And immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.”
Matthew says that Jesus was “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness, but Mark uses a different word. “Drove” is the Greek word ekbállo which literally means “to expel, to drive, to cast or send out.” Mark used it eleven times in his gospel to describe the casting out of demons.
Certainly, Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness, as Matthew expresses, but again Mark expresses immediacy. The VERY FIRST THING the Spirit of God does after Jesus’ baptism and anointing is thrust Him into battle with the Devil. Jesus is impelled forth into a colossal clash with Satan that lays the groundwork for His future ministry and work on Calvary.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary says, “Mark’s Gospel is the record of this great encounter which climaxed at the Cross. At the outset Jesus established His personal authority over Satan. His later exorcisms of demons were based on His victory in this encounter.”
III. NEXT, NOTICE THAT HE WAS THRUST INTO THE WILDERNESS FOR 40 DAYS.
The wilderness had special significance to the Jews:
• In the Old Testament, the wilderness was a place of testing for 40 years. – Because of their unbelief, God let them wander in the wilderness for a generation.
• But it was also a place where Israel experienced intimate fellowship with God. – Yes, they were sorely tested in the wilderness, yet it was there that God tabernacled with Israel; it was there that God led them by a cloud by day and a fire by night; it was there that they experienced God’s daily miraculous provision for their food; it was there that they received the Law of God.
• The wilderness was also a place of spiritual preparation and training for service. Elijah and John the Baptizer were spiritually prepared in the wilderness. After Paul believed in Christ, God led Him to spend three years in the desert to receive his training to understand the Gospel and his part in spreading it.
So, the wilderness was a place for testing, intimate fellowship, training and preparation for active ministry. In His baptism, Jesus is APPROVED and ANOINTED for service; in His temptation experience, Jesus is ACTIVATED for service through testing.
All three of the Synoptic writers (which means Matthew, Mark and Luke) tell us that Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, but Matthew and Luke add that Jesus fasted during this entire time. Although through fasting, He would have experienced intense fellowship with God, the length of the fast would increase the intensity of the temptations. It’s as if the Son of God was exposing Himself to the extremes of human temptation to accomplish a cataclysmic victory over Satan and His forces.
IV. NEXT, IN VERSE 13, NOTICE THE PHRASE “TEMPTED BY SATAN.”
The word “tempted” is peirázo, which means “put to the test, make trial of in order to discover the kind of person someone is.” It is used either in a good sense, as when God tests us through trials to refine us, or in the bad sense of enticement to sin by Satan or his demons or our own fleshly desires.
Both senses are implied here.
• God put Jesus to the test (remember, the Spirit drove Him to it) to show He was qualified for His messianic mission.
• But also, through temptation to sin, Satan tried to draw Jesus away from His divinely appointed mission.
Matthew and Luke emphasize three climactic temptations of Christ, but Mark uses a Greek form of the verb “being” that implies that the temptation was continuous. John Phillips says, “Matthew records the intense climax, Mark the daily battle.”
While Jesus was strengthening His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit and increasing His understanding of His mission and purpose, Satan was constantly tempting Him, constantly engaging Him in spiritual battle.
Just because Jesus was the Son of God, and just because He experienced heightened fellowship with the Father in the wilderness, this was no cake wald for Jesus. This was spiritual warfare at its highest. Jesus was actually tempted, bearing witness to His true humanity.
His adversary was Satan Himself. According to the Old Testament, Satan, which means “Accuser,” is the head of a vast army of fallen angels called demons, one-third of the heavenly host who rebelled against God’s authority sometime before creation. It’s unlikely that you or I are ever personally tempted by Satan himself. He relies on his demonic minions to tempt and trip up the likes of you and me.
But it was Satan Himself—the personification of evil, the head of the world’s system of wickedness, the archenemy of God—who was the tempter of the Son of God. He must have used every stratagem possible against Jesus. He must have tried every trap that has been so successful against mortals like you and me.
The story of the temptation of Christ is a drama of the monumental battle of the ages that we cannot even comprehend…YET HE WON OUT IN THE END! Not once did He succumb to temptation and give in to sin.
Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses; but was in all points tempted…as we are, yet without sin.”
Somehow in those 40 days in the wilderness, and I’m sure many more times in His ministry, Jesus was tempted in every way that we are tempted. Yet he never gave in; He never sinned; He was tempted, “yet without sin!”
But Hebrews 4:15 reminds us that because of Jesus was tempted in every way we are tempted, He sympathizes with our weaknesses and failures. He knows what we go through; He understands; He is sympathetic with our struggle, which is why He is so quick to forgive us again and anew when we confess our sins to Him.
V. NEXT, MARK TELLS US THAT JESUS WAS “WITH THE WILD BEASTS.”
This is a detail not mentioned in the other gospels. The wilderness was the place of the leopard, the lion, the bear, the wild boar, the jackal, serpents and scorpions. The Spirit could not have chosen a more inhospitable place for the Son of God to be tempted.
William Barclay says that this phrase was meant to be a vivid detail to add to the grim terror of the scene. But I saw something else: Paul refers to Jesus as the “last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15:45 to contrast Jesus with Adam.
The first Adam lived in the most beautiful and hospitable place on earth, the Garden of Eden, where fruit and vegetables lushly grew naturally and without sweat or toil, where the animals were tame and where life was safe and easy. In that wonderful environment, when Adam was tempted one single time, he gave in and brought sin upon the whole world.
Jesus, the second Adam, went out into a dangerous environment where the soil was cursed, where there was no sustenance, where the animals wrre fierce and ravenous, and where life was harsh and difficult. In that barren place, when He was tempted many times over the course of 40 days, Jesus resisted temptation every single time and never sinned even once.
That seems to me to be the most logical reason for Mark including this little detail, because the victory over the curse of sin and the coming creation of a new heaven and a new earth speak of a restoration of the original plan of God for creation.
Several Old Testament prophecies of the Kingdom speak of children putting their hands into serpents’ holes with no danger of being bitten and poisoned. They also speak of the lion lying down with the lamb.
We focus so much on our personal salvation from sin, but the bigger story of redemption through Christ is the restoration of the entire universe to the way it was before sin entered this world—sinless, safe, secure, whole, healthy, void of disease and war and famine and danger and pain and death.
VI. VERSE 13 ENDS BY TELLING US THAT THE ANGELS MINISTERED TO JESUS.
This is another detail not in the other gospels. Mark makes a startling contrast: Jesus “was with the wild beasts…and the angels.”
Again, the verb “was” is in a tense in Greek that indicates continuous action. During this entire ordeal, while Jesus was experiencing increasing bodily weakness from fasting so long, and while He was facing intensifying Satanic attack, and while He was increasingly in danger of wild animals and the elements because of His weakened condition, the angels were there to minister to His spiritual needs!
The great fallen angel Satan was there in full force, but so were God’s angels. And though it’s not mentioned, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit were there to strengthen Jesus too.
This was the greatest onslaught of Satan Jesus would face except for His death on Calvary, but it was also the start of the great victories of Jesus’ life and ministry. After He overcomes sin in His wilderness temptation, immediately an empowered Jesus begins to cast out demons, heal the sick, exercise authority over the winds and the seas, forgive sins and even raise the dead.It all started with a great baptism experience, with God’s voice booming from heaven His approval of Jesus, the Spirit’s anointing of Jesus, His immediate period of horrific temptation, deprivation and adversity—followed by His first great victory over Satan, a bad omen of what was ahead for the Great Accuser!
CONCLUSION
What can we take away from Mark’s brief telling of the temptation of Christ?...
First, remember that often great victories in our lives are precursors to great times of testing.
The two most awesome experiences for Jesus in His whole ministry were His baptism and the Transfiguration. Both came just before His two most trying trials: His temptation and His crucifixion.
Thank God for every great victory in your life, but when you they come, don’t let your guard down. Stay in military readiness, so to speak, and be at the ready for battle at any moment.
Peter says that 1 Peter 5:8-9 – “Be sober-minded, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”
Second, recognize that God wants us to use testings to make us stronger.
The same word used for “testing,” as in trials, is used of “temptation” in the Greek. You have to see the word in its context to know which way the word is meant.
But the result of overcoming either sense of the word has the same result: it makes us stronger. God allows us to experience trials to make us stronger, and when we resist temptation, it also serves to strengthen us the next time we are tempted.
Illus. – Suppose a boy is on the second team of a football team. Suppose he’s doing well in the second team and showing real signs of promise. If he shows real signs of promise, he doesn’t send him out to play for the third team in which he could walk through the game and never break a sweat. No, he’ll send him out to play for the first team where he’ll be tested as he never was before and have the chance to prove himself. That is what trials in our lives are meant to do—to enable us to prove ourselves and to emerge the stronger for the fight.
Victory over temptation similarly makes us stronger. God never leads believers into temptation, but if we resist temptation when the enemy attacks, we make ourselves stronger against the enemy and our flesh.
In Romans 6:11, Paul tells us to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Then in verse 12 he teaches us not to let sin reign in our bodies so that we obey its desires. He continues in verse 13: “Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin: but yield yourselves to God, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” Our members are our hands, our feet, our eyes, our ears, our sexual organs and most importantly our minds—the parts of us that actually do the sinning. We must not yield those members over to sin, but to God. That’s the struggle of temptation.
But here’s something you may have missed from Romans 6 that I learned from Jerry Bridges’ book, The Practice of Godliness. If we persist in resisting temptation, something remarkable happens. Paul says further down in verse 19, “…for as you have yielded your members slaves to impurity and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members slaves to righteousness unto holiness.” Bridges says that when we repeatedly yield our members as slaves to impurity, it results in “iniquity unto iniquity,” which he says is an idiom meaning “habits of iniquity.” Rather than doing that, Paul says we are to yield our members as slaves to “righteousness unto holiness” which means “habits of holiness.”
In other words, repeatedly yielding our members to sin results in HABITS of sin; repeatedly yielding to righteousness yields habits of holiness. With every victory over temptation, we’re a little bit stronger than before to handle that temptation the next time. But there is an added benefit: over time, repeated victory holiness becomes a habit.
Third: When you face temptation, you have great resources to call upon to be victorious.
Just as Jesus was ministered to by holy angels as He endured temptation, holy angels are there to minister to us as well. But even more exciting is that if you are truly born again, the Holy Spirit of God indwells you and He is IN you to help you overcome temptation.
When facing temptation, don’t try to handle it by yourself. You are no match for the enemy! Only by calling out to God in prayer for help, seeking God’s assistance His Word, which is alive and power and a powerful spiritual two-edged sword, listening to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, can we successfully resist temptation. It begins by preparing your heart daily with a time in God’s Word, and in prayer and in worshipping God, kind of like putting on your armor in the morning before you leave home. It continues during the day by obeying the Spirit’s leading and quickly confessing sin. And it is strengthened by faithfulness to Sunday Bible Study, morning worship services and participation in a homegroup and the men’s meetings and ladies Bible studies which constantly challenge and strengthen your faith.
Finally, because of Jesus’ resisting temptation, it means that Jesus was a suitable sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins.
When making animal in the Old Testament, God said in Leviticus 22:17-24 that the animal had to be without blemish or defect; it could not be blind, bruised, crushed, torn or cut; it could not have broken bones or be maimed; nor could it have any disease, or even a limb that was longer or shorter than the other. Verse 21 says, “it must be perfect to be accepted.”
These sacrifices represented the transferring of guilt from the offeror to the slain animal for the forgiveness of sins. But the book of Hebrews teaches that these sacrifices did not actually forgive their sins; they were just a temporary covering until THE lamb of God came to pay the penalty for sins once and for all, negating the need for continued animal sacrifices.
When John introduced Jesus to Israel, he didn’t announce, “Behold Israel’s King!”. No, he said, “Behold the LAMB OF GOD who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)
But the Lamb of God had to be perfect from sin to be an acceptable sacrifice. And because Jesus WAS perfect and free from sin, he could pay the penalty for our sin and satisfy God’s judgment against sin.
1 Peter 1:19 says that we were not redeemed by corruptible, or temporary things, but, “but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
If you would place your faith in Jesus as your Savior, the guilt of your sin can be transferred to Jesus and you can receive the full forgiveness of all sin. If you have never done that, I call on you to do so today.
