WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.600 Brothers and sisters, if I could be honest, the devil is not hiding behind every bush. 2 00:00:04.600 --> 00:00:08.280 But what he likes to do is he likes to tempt, and he likes to lie. 3 00:00:08.280 --> 00:00:13.200 And these are the two ways that he's able to get Christians to trip up most times. 4 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:20.960 Well hey, welcome back to our Matthew devotional. 5 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:22.840 Today we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 4. 6 00:00:22.840 --> 00:00:26.680 Matthew chapter 4 says, Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 7 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:28.080 by the devil. 8 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:31.040 After he fasted forty days and forty nights, he was famished. 9 00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:34.760 The tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command that these stones 10 00:00:34.760 --> 00:00:36.000 become bread. 11 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.920 But he answered, It is written, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that 12 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:41.480 comes from the mouth of God. 13 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:44.760 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the 14 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:45.760 temple. 15 00:00:45.760 --> 00:00:49.560 And he said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, 16 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:51.800 he will command his angels concerning you. 17 00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:54.840 With their hands they will lift you up, so that you will not strike your foot against 18 00:00:54.840 --> 00:00:56.040 the stone. 19 00:00:56.040 --> 00:01:00.000 Then Jesus said to him, Once again, it is written, you are not to put the Lord your 20 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:01.280 God to the test. 21 00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:05.519 Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world 22 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:06.900 and their grandeur. 23 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:11.080 And he said to him, I will give you all these things, if you throw yourself down on the 24 00:01:11.080 --> 00:01:12.640 ground and worship me. 25 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:16.240 Then Jesus said to him, Go away, Satan, for it is written, you are to worship the Lord 26 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:18.760 your God and serve only him. 27 00:01:18.760 --> 00:01:22.400 Then the devil left him, and the angels came and began ministering to his needs. 28 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:25.480 Now there are two trains of thoughts I want to be able to break down here. 29 00:01:25.480 --> 00:01:29.000 Number one is what these temptations represent. 30 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.840 And then number two, we're going to get into kind of what spiritual warfare is. 31 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:35.600 Starting with what the three temptations represent. 32 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:36.600 Let's break those down. 33 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:38.160 You see bread being the first one. 34 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:43.180 When Satan said, Turn these stones into bread, what that can show is provision. 35 00:01:43.180 --> 00:01:44.800 The second one is throw yourself down. 36 00:01:44.800 --> 00:01:48.400 What that kind of shows is a person's conscience. 37 00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:51.720 And the third one is bow to me and I will give you power. 38 00:01:51.720 --> 00:01:56.080 But what I want to break down on this is, these are actually the same type of temptations 39 00:01:56.080 --> 00:02:00.360 that the people of Israel dealt with when they were in the wilderness for 40 years. 40 00:02:00.360 --> 00:02:05.320 Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, they were in the wilderness for 40 years, and continually 41 00:02:05.320 --> 00:02:10.160 broke God's covenant with them by giving into each temptation that came to them. 42 00:02:10.160 --> 00:02:13.640 They would complain all the time and tell Moses, Moses we're hungry, it's better for 43 00:02:13.640 --> 00:02:18.420 us to have been in Egypt and stayed in Egypt than it would be for us to die in the wilderness. 44 00:02:18.420 --> 00:02:24.420 So Moses, praying to God, prayed and asked for God to provide and God sent manna. 45 00:02:24.420 --> 00:02:28.860 And yet the people still complained by telling Moses, oh it's better for us to have stayed 46 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:34.860 in Egypt and to be slaves and to die, if you're only going to lead us into the wilderness, 47 00:02:34.860 --> 00:02:36.300 to die here. 48 00:02:36.300 --> 00:02:40.500 And Moses, again, came to God, asked God, God would you provide water, God would you 49 00:02:40.500 --> 00:02:44.620 provide sustenance, God would you provide a victory over these battles we are about 50 00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:45.620 to fight. 51 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:47.940 And we saw that God came through each and every time. 52 00:02:47.940 --> 00:02:53.260 And then we see finally that when they came to the gates of the promised land, they felt 53 00:02:53.260 --> 00:02:58.980 defeated and they said it is better for us to have stayed in Egypt and to stay there 54 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:03.020 as slaves and to eat the fat of the land than to fight against these people. 55 00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:08.180 And we saw that Moses at that time, being angry and upset, came to God again and asked 56 00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:13.220 God to intervene and God said they will not enter into the promised land until this generation 57 00:03:13.220 --> 00:03:14.220 has died. 58 00:03:14.220 --> 00:03:19.780 And so time and time again these people gave into the temptation of griping and complaining 59 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:26.300 and saying God is not faithful, only for God to prove his faithfulness time and time again. 60 00:03:26.300 --> 00:03:32.540 And yet we see here Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days and these same type of temptations 61 00:03:32.540 --> 00:03:33.540 come. 62 00:03:33.540 --> 00:03:38.940 Jesus is fasting, he's hungry, he's tired, and the enemy comes to him and says, hey if 63 00:03:38.940 --> 00:03:42.860 you are the Son of God, turn these rocks into bread. 64 00:03:42.860 --> 00:03:46.360 And Jesus says, for it is written, you will not tempt the Lord your God. 65 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:50.740 And so what Jesus is saying here is, hey I'm not going to turn these rocks into bread, 66 00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:54.820 I'm not going to give into the temptation of eating right now, I'm not going to give 67 00:03:54.820 --> 00:03:59.980 into the temptation of what my flesh wants, instead I'm going to look to God to provide 68 00:03:59.980 --> 00:04:00.980 for me. 69 00:04:00.980 --> 00:04:05.820 We see again he brings them to the highest point of the temple and he says, hey if you 70 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:11.940 are the Son of God, throw yourself down and God will send his angels to protect you. 71 00:04:11.940 --> 00:04:13.780 God will send his angels to save you. 72 00:04:13.780 --> 00:04:17.500 And we see Jesus says again, once again, it is written, you are not to put the Lord your 73 00:04:17.500 --> 00:04:19.899 God to the test. 74 00:04:19.899 --> 00:04:24.700 Knowing that hey, just because I'm fasting, just because I'm walking with God, just because 75 00:04:24.700 --> 00:04:30.140 I'm tempted to give into my conscience and I want what my heart wants now doesn't mean 76 00:04:30.140 --> 00:04:32.540 I'm going to put God to the test. 77 00:04:32.540 --> 00:04:36.860 And then the last temptation was, hey if you are the Son of God, bow down to me now and 78 00:04:36.860 --> 00:04:41.060 I will give you all these nations, all the nations of the world, all the kingdoms of 79 00:04:41.060 --> 00:04:42.340 the world for you to rule. 80 00:04:42.340 --> 00:04:46.100 And we see right then and there that Jesus, instead of bowing down and giving himself 81 00:04:46.100 --> 00:04:50.700 over to have more power, knowing that God has already given him power, decided to tell 82 00:04:50.700 --> 00:04:53.980 the devil to flee, to run, to get behind him. 83 00:04:53.980 --> 00:04:59.940 Now this is a great passage of what we see, what it means to actually persevere through 84 00:04:59.940 --> 00:04:59.940 85 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:04.760 temptations. So many times we have believers today who will give in to the 86 00:05:04.760 --> 00:05:08.200 first temptation that they see, the first temptation that they have. When it comes 87 00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:11.720 to provision, how many Christians do you know? And maybe it might even be you. 88 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:15.480 I've definitely fallen into this temptation before when it comes to 89 00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:18.700 provision, when it comes to maybe making more money at a job that you know God 90 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:22.880 has called you out of, or when it comes to maybe spending more time away from 91 00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:26.360 your family to be able to focus more on your career so you can get that next 92 00:05:26.920 --> 00:05:32.240 We see that we'll much rather risk our devotional life, we'll much rather risk 93 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:35.960 our time with God, we'll much rather risk our Sundays at church, we would much 94 00:05:35.960 --> 00:05:39.040 rather risk everything else when it comes to the spiritual just so we can 95 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:43.120 have our physical provisions and needs met. Maybe the second one, maybe we'll 96 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:48.520 give ourselves over into a gloom mindset, maybe we'll give ourselves over into a 97 00:05:48.520 --> 00:05:52.720 negative outlook on the world and so many times we'll see that we'll walk 98 00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:56.080 around, we'll just have negative thoughts towards people, maybe we'll look 99 00:05:56.080 --> 00:06:00.000 around and we'll just start looking at people as if they're less than, maybe 100 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:03.280 we'll start judging people and holding grudges, maybe we'll start letting our 101 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:08.720 conscience be plagued and bittered and uprooted from what's good and what's 102 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:13.440 godly and we'll just become a person who is willing to to throw themselves at 103 00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:19.320 every single wind and wave of whatever it is that brings us joy, instead of 104 00:06:19.320 --> 00:06:22.680 knowing that we're not to put the Lord to the test, instead of saying, God you 105 00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:25.320 know how I'm feeling now, I guess I'm just gonna walk away from my faith 106 00:06:25.320 --> 00:06:28.480 because you didn't do this or God I'm just gonna I'm just gonna give up 107 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:32.680 because you didn't do that for me. We're telling ourselves, hey you know what our 108 00:06:32.680 --> 00:06:36.360 our emotions don't dictate our reality, we're not gonna put God to the test like 109 00:06:36.360 --> 00:06:39.680 that. Or maybe even the third one which is probably the biggest one is how many 110 00:06:39.680 --> 00:06:43.000 of us have been tempted with power, whether it's again that promotion or 111 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.600 whether it's whether it's to stay in a relationship because we have control 112 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:51.600 over that person or whatever it is, we see so many times that these are the 113 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:56.160 temptations that the enemy likes to throw at us and so many times we have 114 00:06:56.160 --> 00:07:00.000 Christians that fall into this left and right. This is a great passage of what 115 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:04.240 spiritual warfare looks like. You see the devil's way of attacking Jesus is to 116 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:09.080 tempt him and dispute what I like to call half-truths. What half-truths are are 117 00:07:09.080 --> 00:07:13.160 it's not necessarily a full lie, there's still still some truth in it but it's 118 00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:17.400 not the full truth. You see this is the way he also likes to attack every 119 00:07:17.400 --> 00:07:21.960 believer. If you can get someone to fall into a pit and to stay there then you 120 00:07:21.960 --> 00:07:25.120 don't have to worry about them anymore and if you can get someone to believe in 121 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:29.160 a lie you don't have to worry about them anymore. We saw that in World War II, we 122 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:35.920 saw that in Nazi Germany when Hitler had an entire nation believing lies. He used 123 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:41.280 passion, he used half-truths to be able to to get these people in this nation to 124 00:07:41.280 --> 00:07:46.880 believe the the agenda he had at hand and we saw the consequences to it. One 125 00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:50.720 thing I want to iterate here is we need to understand that it is often not the 126 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:54.920 devil attacking us it is usually the consequences of our sins and yet we love 127 00:07:54.920 --> 00:07:59.240 to to blame him anytime life gets difficult not realizing that we have 128 00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:04.220 given ourselves into the temptations that were presented to us or we believe 129 00:08:04.220 --> 00:08:06.960 the lies that were told to us and because of that there's this thing 130 00:08:06.960 --> 00:08:11.240 called consequences of sin and when we fall into these temptations when we 131 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:15.720 believe these lies we actually start seeing what sin actually does. It hardens 132 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:20.800 our heart it turns our gaze from God and it allows us to be able to start 133 00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:25.320 complaining like the like the people of Israel did and yet so many times in so 134 00:08:25.320 --> 00:08:29.560 many ways we have churches and we have Christians who believe that spiritual 135 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:33.280 warfare is anytime life is an inconvenience anytime there is a 136 00:08:33.280 --> 00:08:37.360 sickness every time there is a disease we assume that it's from the enemy we 137 00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:41.280 assume that the devil sent it to us but brothers and sisters if I could be 138 00:08:41.280 --> 00:08:45.560 honest the devil is not hiding behind every bush but what he likes to do is he 139 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:49.520 likes to tempt and he likes to lie and these are the two ways that he's able to 140 00:08:49.520 --> 00:08:55.100 get Christians to to trip up most times you see he uses scriptures and he 141 00:08:55.100 --> 00:08:58.480 twists it to be able to fit his agenda we see he did that with Jesus in the 142 00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:03.120 wilderness and yet we see that Jesus refutes every attack with scripture you 143 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:07.160 see Jesus is quoting a scripture from the book of Deuteronomy you see this is 144 00:09:07.160 --> 00:09:10.600 a book that a lot of us skip over in our devotions Deuteronomy if I could be 145 00:09:10.600 --> 00:09:15.720 honest when I read it it's very boring because I have how repetitive it is and 146 00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:19.640 yet Jesus is battling Satan in the wilderness using the book of Deuteronomy 147 00:09:19.640 --> 00:09:23.360 I mean might as well throw the book of Numbers in there with how boring I feel 148 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:27.360 Deuteronomy can be and yet we see here that Jesus is able to refute every lie 149 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:32.920 every half-truth that the enemy throws to him by quoting scripture and what 150 00:09:32.920 --> 00:09:37.200 blows my mind is this is how every single word in the Bible is used to help 151 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:40.680 the children of God so whatever spiritual attack the enemy wants to 152 00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:45.240 bring to you whether it's whether it's half-truths whether it's temptations or 153 00:09:45.240 --> 00:09:49.360 whether it's what we see in the book of Job if it's if it's full-on spiritual 154 00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:54.200 physical attack you can refute that with scripture why because the Word of God is 155 00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:58.540 a lot more powerful than anything that the enemy can throw to us and so the 156 00:09:58.540 --> 00:10:02.080 amazing thing about this chapter 157 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.600 is we see actually how to fight the enemy spiritually. 158 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:07.000 And it's scripture refuting scripture. 159 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000 It's scripture refuting temptations. 160 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:11.000 And it's scripture refuting lies. 161 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:13.500 There's so much truth in the Word of God. 162 00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:15.000 I hope this blessed you. 163 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:17.000 I hope you were able to get a lot out of this. 164 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:18.000 Grace and peace.