His Temptation

So, open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 4. Matthew chapter 4 will actually be looking at Matthew 4 and Luke 4 tonight. And we may also get into just a little bit of Mark chapter 1 verses 12 and 13, although there's not as much in Mark on the temptations. There is some there. And we may look at that a little bit as well. We began talking about the temptation of Christ last week and talked about a little bit about the differences in the Gospel accounts. Pointed out just two or three differences in the three accounts in the Gospels and why those might be there. But we're going to begin tonight with the purpose of the temptation. The purpose of the temptation really is threefold. From three different perspectives really, if you look first of all from Satan's perspective, you can see that the purpose of the temptation from Satan's perspective is to disqualify Christ as the Messiah. Jesus has come to be the one through whom salvation would come. And if he commits one sin, then he is not qualified to be our Savior. Satan knows that. And so Satan's purpose in the temptation was to try to get Jesus to sin and thus disqualify himself from being the Messiah. If Jesus sins, then he has sin of his own to pay for. He's not qualified to pay for our sin as a substitute. Remember even in the Old Testament sacrificial system, the Lamb that was to be brought as a substitute was to be without spot. It was to be blameless or perfect as perfect as one could be. You were not supposed to bring a Lamb that had any physical defect in it. And so even that symbolism there carries through. Jesus would be the perfect Lamb of God. So from Satan's perspective, if he sins, he disqualifies himself from being the Messiah. From the Father's perspective, the temptation also has a purpose from God, the Father's perspective. And from the Father's perspective, the purpose is to demonstrate the qualification of Jesus to be the Messiah. To demonstrate that he truly is morally qualified to be our Redeemer, our Savior. Now putting those two together, there's a very instructive lesson in the whole subject of temptation that really applies to us. And that is that Satan tempts, but God tests. Satan will tempt, but God will test or seek to prove us. And it may be the same event. What Satan uses as a temptation, God will use as a test of our character. And so there are examples of that plenty in the Bible. Probably the best known one would be Job. What happened to Job was a temptation, obviously of Satan. Satan was seeking to get him to blaspheme God and to turn against God. Remember when Satan appeared before God and said, you know, I want to chance at that guy. And I don't think he'll stand up under my assault. And what Satan was using as a temptation, God was using as a test of Job's character. And so the same thing is happening with Jesus. God is testing, proving that he is morally qualified to be the Messiah. So whenever you are tempted, think of it in terms of a test that God is sending your way to strengthen you, to prove you, to enable you to trust him so that you do not fall into Satan's temptation, but you prove your faithfulness, your loyalty, your allegiance to God himself. So from the Father's perspective, it is a test. Now there's a third perspective of the trial and that is from Jesus perspective from Jesus perspective. The temptation is a demonstration that man walking in the power of the Holy Spirit and relying upon the Word of God is more than a match for Satan. And this is a wonderful lesson for us. Jesus shows that man, as you walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we'll see later on that he was led by the Spirit and Luke says he was full of the Spirit, he was filled with the Spirit as he went out to meet Satan. So man led by the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, and depending on the Word of God, we'll see that Jesus depends on the Bible. He quotes from the Word of God three times in response to the temptation. So any of us, Jesus shows us this. Any of us relying upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God are more than a match for Satan. Now Satan is more powerful than we are, but he is not more powerful than the Spirit of God and the Word of God. So when we depend upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, we are more than a match for Satan. You can resist any temptation through the power of the Spirit of God and reliance upon the Word of God. Now that requires us to take a step further in understanding the temptation and that is that Jesus responded to the temptation on a human level. Now you have to be real careful here. We've talked about the fact that Jesus was both God and man, and he was not schizophrenic. It was not that sometimes he was man and sometimes he was God and there were times when he flexed his deity muscle and there were times when he didn't have that and so he was just a man. It's not that way. It was always one person, two natures and one person, but when it comes to the temptation, he responded to the temptation on a human level. This is one of those cases where we find, I believe, that what we talked about, I believe last time, that Jesus voluntarily restrained from using the independent use of his attributes, divine attributes. I think the temptation is a case in point. Jesus responded on a human level. Otherwise the temptation really has no value to us. If Jesus responded by exercising his divine power, then that really doesn't hold any benefit for us because we can't do that. We don't have divine power. We don't have deity residing in us, not in our own person nature. Jesus responded on a human level to the temptation, depending on the Holy Spirit and relying upon the Word of God. You can see that in several ways. First of all, when he responded to the first temptation, he said to Satan, man will not live by bread alone. I'm responding as a man. I'm responding on a human level to this temptation. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. At the end of the temptation, the angels came to minister to him indicating his human frailty, human weakness physically. The angels ministered to him. There's a verse that we need to recognize also from James, chapter 1, verse 13, on the screen. When tempted, no one can say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. Now, again, be careful with this. We're going to see a little bit later that Jesus was truly tempted, but he was not tempted from within. God cannot be tempted by... there's nothing in God that says, wow, I'd kind of like to do that simple behavior. I'd like to think that simple thought. There's nothing in him that would respond to temptation. Jesus responded to the temptation on a purely human level, becoming an example to us that as people, as men and women, if we rely upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, we can overcome Satan's temptations as well. From Satan's perspective, it was a temptation to try to get Jesus to sin, disqualify himself from being the Messiah and the Savior. From God's perspective, it was a test to prove his character, to prove who was morally qualified from Jesus's perspective. It's an example that any man, any woman, any person, depending on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, can overcome Satan. Okay, that's the purpose of the temptation. Questions, comments about the temptation from that perspective, the purpose of the temptation? Any question or comment? I know you said, how can we tell the difference between what is Jesus responding in human form or... How do we know when he's responding in his humanity and his deity? When he's putting his eyes in ability to... When he's voluntary laying aside his independent use of divine attributes. That's a very tricky thing, John, and it's very difficult to say, well, this is his humanity, this is his deity. He was always one person, and both are always there. But those evidences that seem to be there, Jesus saying, man does not live by bread alone, the angels ministering to him, the fact that God cannot be tempted from within, that would seem to indicate that he was... And the fact that it's an example to us, that would seem to indicate that he's responding on a human level. Now, we have to be careful with that. And again, you know, you don't want to make Christ two people. You don't want to make him schizophrenic. Well, he's human here, but he's divine there. And that's one of the difficulties of the person of Christ. It's very difficult to wrap your mind around the person of Christ, the humanity and the deity in one person. One theologian has said that the person of Christ, the two natures in Christ, is the bankruptcy of logic, the bankruptcy of human logic. It's very much like the Trinity trying to understand and explain the Trinity, or what we were talking about Sunday, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. There are certain things that are just really difficult to get your mind around, and this is one of them. And so it's a reason we all struggle to say, okay, humanity, deity, which are we seeing here? Because we can use those excuse to say we Jesus is that the people of God. So we can send a roll off of that same faith. Yeah. Yeah, that's very easy to do for us to say what Jesus was able to respond this way because he was God. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's best to see Jesus as not using his divine attributes unless it fit in the purpose of the Father to do so. He voluntarily laid aside the independent use of his divine attributes. And he lived human life as a man. He was always God, but he did not always flex his divine muscle. He didn't always use his divine attributes. And again, it's very difficult to even state that correctly. When you begin to really try to figure out the person of Christ and explain it logically and figure out every little detail, you know, wires get crossed and circuits blow and smoke starts rolling at your ears. If you see smoke start rolling up my ears, say, John, stop, please. You don't have enough up there to spare. Save it. And it is really the bankruptcy of human logic to try to figure this out completely. So we all struggle there for sure. Okay. Anything else there on the purpose of the temptation before we move to probably the greatest theological issue and problem when it comes to the temptation of Christ? You're eager to get into that, aren't you? Okay. Let's tread in where angels jump in, where angels fear to tread. Whatever that's saying is, anyway, let's do it. Let's go there. The impeccability of Christ. The impeccability of Christ. This is the greatest theological problem when it comes to the most difficult thing to understand when it comes to the temptation of Christ. And so let's begin with a definition of the impeccability of Christ. What are we talking about here? The meaning of impeccable. Well, the word itself, impeccable, comes from two Latin words. So brush up on your Latin a little bit here for just a moment. M, which means much like our N. If you're capable of something, what happens if you're incapable? Not. Okay. So M means not. And then the second word is the Latin word paccarei, which means sin. Okay. So what impeccability means not sin, not sin. That's the idea. Now, here's the theological question when it comes to the temptation of Jesus. The real issue that theologians have struggled over and debate over and differ over. And it's this. When you say that Jesus was tempted, there are two ways to express this. Are we saying that he was not able to sin? Or are we saying he was able not to sin? Okay. If we're saying that Jesus was just able not to sin, what we're saying is that he could have sinned, he just didn't. Jesus could have sinned, but he just didn't. He resisted it and he didn't sin. Are we saying that or are we saying that he was not able to sin? Jesus was not able to sin. And if you're saying this, if you're saying that he was not able to sin, then is the temptation really valid? Is the temptation real if he's not able to sin? He did not sin. We would all agree on that, right? He did not sin. We would all agree there. This is really more difficult than I'm making it sound by putting these two phrases up here. And it's something that we really struggle with. I'm going to take the position. So hang with me for a while. I'm going to take the position that Jesus was not able to sin. He was not able to sin. And I'm going to give you some reasons why I believe that is a biblical position. But in taking that position, we have to deal very honestly with the fact that was it really a temptation? Was the temptation genuine if he was not able to sin? I mean, it'd be pretty easy if I'm not able to sin to say, well, I'm not who cares about temptation. I wouldn't be tempted if I was not able to sin. The Bible makes it very clear Jesus was tempted. We'll see that in a moment. But I believe there's good reason to say that he was not able to sin also. Why? How? Well, let's talk a little bit about that. That's the difficult question, by the way. And I didn't mention that part of the outline. The difficult question is was he able not to sin or was he not able to sin? And if he was not able to sin, then really could we even say it was a genuine temptation? Well, there are several considerations. And again, there are good people on both sides of this issue, by the way. Good people who differ on this. So it's not the kind of thing that we should make a test of fellowship. And people are not going to be in heaven if they disagree with you on this issue. It's not that. But I want to make a case for this one that Jesus was not able to sin, but the temptation was genuine. You say, well, that doesn't even sound logical. No, it doesn't. But remember, the person of Christ is the bankruptcy of logic. You can't figure a lot of these things out logically. Okay, when I make a case, first of all, for the fact that Jesus was not able to sin, several considerations. First of all, Jesus was the God man. He is always man, but he is also always God. And again, it's very difficult to conceive of this without us thinking. Sometimes he is God. Sometimes he is man. No, he is always man, always God. Always one person. The two natures exist perfectly in one person all of the time. So there's never a time in Jesus life, even though he may, as I said earlier, be responding on a human level, voluntarily laying aside the independent use of his divine power, he is still God. Even when he is voluntarily laying side, the independent use of his deity, and he's not going to flex his muscle against Satan and saying, forget you, I'm God. Although he may lay aside voluntarily the independent use of his divine power, he is still God. And in the moment that the temptation comes, he is God. Is it possible for God to sin? No, it's not. So the person of Christ would lead us to believe that it is not possible for him to sin. If it was possible for Jesus to sin, then it's possible for God to sin. The Father, God, the Holy Spirit. So I think we want to come down on the side, regardless of how we figure out the psychology of the temptation, we want to come down on the side that Jesus as the God-man could not sin. Secondly, Jesus had no sin nature. He had a human nature, but it was not in any way tainted by sin. It was not corrupted by sin at all. There is a verse that Jesus, something that Jesus says in John chapter 14 and verse 30, the evening before we would die on the cross, he would say, I will not say much more to you talking to his disciples in the upper room. For the Prince of this world is coming, he has no hold over me. I like the King James translation. The King James says, the rule of the world is coming and he has nothing in me. He has nothing in me. He has no hold over me. He has nothing in me. There is nothing in me that can respond to Satan. There is no ground in me that he can land on and say, I have got you. Let me put it this way. In order for you to receive a broadcast on your radio or television, you need two things. Well, you need a lot more. I don't understand all this. I know you need two things. You need a transmitter and you need a receiver. You need something that is transmitting a signal and then you need a receiver that is receiving the signal. When you and I sin, there is a transmitter out there. There are several of them. One of them is Satan. One of them is the world. There are lots of transmitters out there. There are other people who are transmitting the signal saying, you do this. Think this. Say this. Go ahead. There is transmitter. There is also a receiver in it. That receiver is a sin nature. Jesus didn't have the receiver. He had a fully human nature but it was not in any way tainted by sin. There was nothing in him for Satan to grab hold of and say, I have a receiver in you. Here it goes. Then he could not have sinned. He had no sin nature. We make sense so far. You have questions before we go on to the next one. Adam. That is a good question. What makes Adam different from God? What does Adam make different from God or from Jesus? Adam was created with a human nature but not sinful. What makes him different? Adam was created with a human nature but not sinful. He had no sin. We would say Adam is more in this category. Abel not to sin. He doesn't yet know the knowledge of good and evil. You agree with that? Anything else? Stain it? He is not dead. He is not God like Jesus is. Most theologians would say that Adam was created in innocence or what is called unconfirmed holiness. Adam was created in unconfirmed holiness. That is that while he was completely holy it was yet unconfirmed in the sense that he could respond to a test and sin. He was created in innocence of evil but he could sin. He was able not to sin but he was also able to sin. That sense was different than Jesus. Good question, Herb. Yes, Penny? I want to make sure everybody is hearing the question. If Christ was not able to sin, why didn't Satan even try? I think that is a great question. The only answer to that I can think of is Satan knows what the Bible says. Satan knows what the Bible says about his own destiny and about the failure of his plan to overthrow God. Satan doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe what God says. He is always doubted and does not believe God's word. I think there is a sense in which Satan really feels he can get by with. He can do it. I think he really believed that he could get Christ to sin. He should know better. He knows what the Bible says but he doesn't believe God. There is call it delusion or whatever. Satan believes he can pull it off. God Adam, so he thought he would try Christ and might get him. Maybe that was it. Yes, Richard? No, I don't think he would try anything. That is a good description. I think we would want to come to the point. You don't have to. You don't want to. You will get straightened out when you get to heaven. I think I want to come to the position that Jesus is not able to sin. The nature of temptation. I love what one particular Lutheran theologian said about this. I am just going to quote it because it is stated so well. The temptation is literally a testing. Again, he is looking at it from God's perspective. It is a testing to see whether the tested one will choose God's service or not. This does not necessarily imply the possibility of a failure to stand the test. He uses a great illustration. He says gold may be tested as well as draw. Gold can never fail to stand the test. Theoretically, as long as we do not know that the metal in question is gold, there may be the possibility in our minds that it will fail when put to the proof. But actually, there is no such possibility. The gold, just because it is gold, will stand the test and cannot possibly fail to do so. If we were in ignorance about the true nature of Christ's person, we should suppose that he might have failed in the hour of temptation. But knowing as we do that he is the veritable son of God, we know that he could not have sinned. Being pure gold, he could not fail to stand the test. He might be tempted by Satan in many ways, but it was not possible that he should fall because he was the son of God. I like the way he says that. I particularly like his analogy of gold. Gold cannot fail to stand the test. It cannot fail the test of fire. Now, if you have something in there that you think is gold but it is not really gold, then it is going to fail. But if it is gold, it cannot fail. That is, I think, a good analogy. The purpose of temptation is when it comes to the son of God, it is to test, to prove, and he will never fail that test because of who he is. He is the son of God. Okay, one more reason, and then we will give an illustration. The fourth reason, or the fourth thing that we must take into account, Scripture does make it clear that he was really tempted. Now, this is providing some balance here. Scripture makes it clear that he was really tempted. He was not able to sin, but he was really tempted. He felt the full force of temptation. A couple of verses that make this clear, beyond any doubt, Hebrews 2.18, because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. And then Hebrews 4.15, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin. Okay, the Bible makes it clear that the temptation was genuine. It was real. And he did not sin. So, if he could not sin, how do we put together the fact that the temptation was genuine, that it was real? Maybe an illustration can help. At least this illustration has helped me to understand the nature of Christ's temptation. An illustration of the nature of Christ's temptation is a broom handle. Okay, you take the average broom handle, wooden broom handle, and most of us in this room could probably break it. I mean, you can probably break it over your knee, or if you're like me, just like a matchstick. No problem. Okay, you could potentially, at least, you could break a wooden broom handle. However, if you somehow secure to that wooden broom handle, an iron rod, you would not be able to break that broom handle. You may put as much pressure on it on your knee, even on the broom wooden part, you may put as much pressure on it as you did before. And that wooden broom handle will feel that pressure, if it had any feeling in it, it will feel that pressure. It will feel that force against it. But you will not break that handle. If it is somehow tied to an iron rod, it will not break. Okay, now the illustration obviously is not perfect, but you get the point. Jesus in his humanity is the wooden broom handle. But unite with him a divine nature, a steel rod, an iron rod, and you will not break. Now, he will feel the pressure. He will feel the force of the temptation. He understands what it means to be tempted by Satan, but he cannot break. Okay, now that kind of helps me to understand how Jesus is not able to sin, but he still feels the temptation. He still experiences genuine temptation. Now, it is not like he was tempted from within to do something that is wrong, but he feels the force of Satan's power against him, but he is not able to break. Okay, now that is the position that I have come to. I think it is a biblical position. You know, I could be wrong. But I don't think I am. I think I am right on that one. Okay. All right. Any comments or questions that will move on to the circumstances of the temptation begin to talk about the actual scriptural account, but I think you can see there is a huge theological difficulty here that is not easy to deal with. And I did want to talk about that a little bit. Any comments or questions about the nature of the temptation? Yes. I think that is the good thing people need to be interested in. And that is kind of how I can look at two. You know, the faith and the need to be in a lot of things that are not able to do. Because together it has to be a good thing to do. Okay. I think I followed that, although you could probably see now why I would not use a math illustration. That was brilliant. That was great, but I couldn't say that. But I think I understand what you are saying. There is a smaller parameter. There is a larger parameter which is the deity. The smaller one has to be included in the larger one. So the larger one takes control and that is that he cannot sin. In his humanity, you might say yes, but in the deity over rules that. Yes. One person. Yeah. What? Yeah. That is a great statement. There has to be a formula in there somewhere that Jesus actually felt the temptation even though he couldn't sin. And I think the only way I can understand that and express that is he could feel the force of Satan's power. But he was not able to sin. And you know, Hebrews does say he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities or our weaknesses. He understands human frailty. He understands that. He understands the onslaught of Satan as a human because he was God. He could not sin. But he understands fully that that sense of human frailty in the face of Satan's temptation. Now how all that works out psychologically, I'm not I can't understand. I can't explain that. With him experiencing death, a parallel there. Yes. Certainly he laid aside the voluntarily laid aside the independent use of his divine attributes there experienced human death. There's some naughty issues and questions here that I'm confident I can't fully explain or understand. But you got to land on one side of this issue and I kind of like this one better. So with its problems with its difficulties, I think that's where I'll stay. That he was not able to sin, but he felt fully the force of Satan's power and temptation and is able to sympathize with our human frailty in that regard. Okay. Tired of questions. Let's go on. I'm not. I love questions. I just don't have the answers all the time. Circumstances of the temptation. What were the actual circumstances of the temptation? Let's look at Matthew chapter four, verse one. The very first thing that said, then Jesus was led by the spirit in the desert to be tempted by the devil. Wow. What a statement. Luke says he was full of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he was filled with the spirit under the complete control of the Holy Spirit. And he was led by the spirit. Mark says in Mark 1, verse 12 says he was sent out into the wilderness by the spirit. The word sent out is echabolo, which means to cast out, to throw out. He was literally driven out into the wilderness by Satan. Quite a graphic term. The idea is that Jesus was led by the spirit to take this step. It's not like he was just experiencing the leading of the spirit and he kind of wonders out in the wilderness. Oh, they're Satan. Oh, he's going to be here. He was let he was thrust out directly to meet Satan head on. That's the idea in this being led by Satan or led by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Temptation is a part is a normal part of growing strong in the Christian life. You will face temptation even when you are filled with the spirit. Okay. Temptation does not mean you're not spirit filled. Obviously, if you yielded that temptation, you just lost the control of the Holy Spirit at that moment in your life. But you can be walking in the spirit filled with the spirit and all of a sudden run smack into a temptation that Satan throws at you. I also think that what we find here is a good lesson that God never intends us to live the Christian life in our own strength. Jesus, even Jesus is dependent upon the spirit's power as he goes out into his ministry and as he goes out to face Satan. Okay. So he was full of the spirit led by the spirit driven out by the spirit to face Satan. Any questions about that before we actually look at the place where Jesus was? Okay. He was in the wilderness. The Bible says. And let's take a look at probably the area of Israel where he was. I'm not going to say much about the titles to these slides. But this is the Judean wilderness. Now there's some question about exactly where it was. Was the baptism further north, about 10, 15 miles south of the Sea of Galilee. If so, did Jesus go from there further south? It's in the wilderness and typically the area called the wilderness is in Judea, more southern part of the country. But this is what it looks like. Some of you have been there. No, John, you've been there and others of you may have been too. And you realize this is a very barren. When we think of wilderness, we might think of jungle. We may think of that. In Israel, wilderness is barren. It's like desert. Okay. So this is the Judean wilderness. Here's some on the edge of it, some settling and civilization. But let's take a look at the next picture. This is the largest wadi. A wadi is a stream, a riverbed that will run with water in the rainy season, but will dry up and just be a big ditch in the dry season. You can see it right here. But this is the Judean desert. This is what this is the kind of terrain that Jesus would have been in. Extremely hot, extremely barren, very rugged countryside, another picture of it. The monastic retreats, by the way, the monks in the 300s, 400s and on up through the next few centuries of the Catholic church domination built scores of monasteries in this area because they wanted to get out in the wilderness and fast like Jesus fasted and so forth. So here's one that remains today that's built into the side of a hill. You can see, I mean, there's just hardly anything. There's a few scrubby trees, but there's hardly anything in this barren wilderness desert. I think we have maybe one more picture. Yeah, this is called the Mount of Temptation. This is one of the mountains that rises up from the east side or the west side of the river Jordan. And so this is the place that is usually designated as the Mount where Jesus was tempted. Nobody knows for sure, but you know, at some point in early church history, they were going throughout the land trying to find every point where Jesus ever was and they found a place a mountain near the Jordan River where they said, well, this is probably the place where he was tempted. It was certainly terrain like that, even if this was not the particular mountain. Okay, so when the Bible says he went out into the wilderness, that's what we're looking at. We're not looking at a jungle. We're not looking at, you know, Brazil or the Pacific Northwest. Okay, we're looking at this kind of terrain. Okay, another thing is that the Bible says that Jesus fasted. See there in verse two after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. There's a sense in which this is the beginning of his ministry. He has just started just been anointed into his ministry as the Holy Spirit has come on. The Holy Spirit has come on him and his baptism. And so he's concentrating all of his focus, all of his focus on this conflict with Satan and on the beginning of his ministry and what he knows lies ahead of him in the next three, three and a half years. It's not that food is bad and obviously there have been a lot of people who've gone to extremes with this. It's not that food is bad, but there is a place for the setting aside of legitimate desires and human appetites in order to devote yourself solely to spiritual conflict. And that's what Jesus appears to be doing here. Okay, fasting. Why do we think it was just 40 days? Yeah, that's the bottom line of Bible says it, but it's interesting that and I don't go crazy on numerology. Okay, so don't take that out of here. But there is an interesting use of the 40 all through the Bible 40 does seem to be a period of testing. Moses is on the mountain 40 days receiving the law. Israel's waiting for him. Israel wonders in the wilderness 40 years and you can find example after example of the 40 is the period of testing. It seems and so this is just a period of testing 40 days other than that. I don't know. Does anybody else have an answer for that? A reason maybe why it would be 40 rather than 35. It seems to be that the common period of testing in in the Bible. Yes, the 40 lashes, the 40 stripes, the beating with 40 lashes and they would typically stop at 39 just so they wouldn't go over the 40. Okay, all right, let's stop. It's eight o'clock and we're going to stop there. We'll get to the avenues of temptation next time, which is the actual three temptations that Jesus faced. By the way, let me just say this so you don't go away with this with a misperception. The temptation lasted 40 days. Luke makes it clear that Jesus was tempted the whole 40 days. Probably the three temptations we have recorded are the capstone at the end of the 40 days. Satan hits him with all of his artillery and we'll see how that works out next time. Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you for our savior, the one who we marvel at because of his moral perfections because he was qualified to be our savior. He did stand up against the onslaughts of Satan. Thus proving who he was, the Son of God, we thank you, Father, that although he felt the force and the brunt of Satan's attacks against him, he did not, could not fail. We thank you, Father, that he met Satan on human terms, depending on the Holy Spirit, depending on the Word of God, as we can as well. And we pray that we will be faithful to trust you and walk in your Spirit, depending upon your Word to guide our steps. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.