Posted on 01/20/2019 4:13:57 AM PST by metmom
“Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain” (Matthew 4:8).
Satan’s final temptation was a last-ditch effort to corrupt and derail Christ and His saving mission. The greatest of all adversaries sought to complete a sinister bargain in which extremely attractive and enticing possessions were offered to Jesus in exchange for His subservience to Satan.
The location (“a very high mountain”) where Satan took Jesus no doubt allowed them to have a comprehensive view of the earth for hundreds of miles in every direction. But their vantage point was clearly spiritual and supernatural as well. They would have seen the power and dominance of Rome, the glories of Egypt, and the splendor of various Greek city-states. All the wonders of the ancient world, including the magnificence of Jerusalem, would have been included.
As the King of kings, Jesus already had the rights to own and govern all the world’s kingdoms, but Satan tried to twist that reality for his own purposes. He wanted Jesus to leap ahead of God’s promised plan and reign as a king before it was fully time to do so—and at the unthinkable cost of worshiping him. If our enemy can tempt Jesus to be impatient and impulsive and grasp things prematurely, that is all the more reason for us to be on guard against such attacks.
Ask Yourself
Timing is everything. And Jesus displayed an infallible sense of what to do—and when—in every situation. Is there anything in your own life that you’re trying to speed ahead with, whether God wants you slowing down or not? Find peace in His timing. It’s always perfect—more perfect than we think.
Studying God’s Word ping
This story never made sense to me. If Jesus is God, and God created Satan, then where is the leverage for the temptation?
It is written...”Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and “He Himself does not tempt anyone.” James 1:13 says
It does not say “he cannot be tempted”- but that “he cannot be tempted by evil” that is the point of James thought, God does not tempt us with evil (to sin) nor can He be tempted by evil and sin.
Temptations often instigate a response from the sin nature in man, but Jesus had no sin nature...... God has all power, He can create and destroy with the blink of an eye. Does this mean if he does not use his power he does not really posses it?
He was tempted without sinning because “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19-21.)
The devil could not tempt Jesus with something he didn’t already have. He is called ‘the god of this world’ in Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians because in this current paradigm, the devil controls all the worldly kingdoms. He is tempting Jesus with something that he successfully temped 1/3 of the angels in heaven with: to rule this world in place of God. By refusing, Jesus guaranteed that the devil would not control it forever. Christ’s return would mark the end.
The 30 year old-ish Jesus, knowing He had all this power based on His ability to perform miracles and dominate crowds of people without having any worldly position or authority. He had profound insights as to the human experience. He had the most profound wisdom of anyone at His time or in the past (as recorded in Scriptures--of which He noticed that--strangely--He already had the deepest, most intimate, knowledge of).
Jesus knew He was at a fork in the road (He might have always known it).
He could easily rule the world as a secular ruler (except that He probably already was well aware that He had self-healing powers such that His rule on earth wouldn't span just one normal human life, but go on and on).
OR
He could do what He knew He was born for and that is take the hard road. Take the road of humiliation and pain and death to serve the Father.
It still blows my mind.
No human being could have resisted this temptation.
That Jesus resisted this temptation must have also blown Satan's mind.
Ruling the world merely by virtue of who you are, your personality, your charisma, your power. That's powerful.
But being able to have all that power AND then to turn away from it to meet a higher calling that means humiliation, rejection, and the Cross.
Now that's REAL POWER. That's not human power...that's DIVINE POWER.
This is another argument which speaks out against the Trinity, as it’s not written that Jesus would call on angels to protect himself. Another being is involved which is part of the equation.
“This story never made sense to me. If Jesus is God, and God created Satan, then where is the leverage for the temptation?”
It is all legalities. If Satan did not have the ability to grant what he claimed as his authority, then there would not have been any temptation for Jesus to decline.
At the Last Supper, Jesus said Satan had come around, but he couldn’t find anything in Jesus to lay claim to.
Theologians think Satan achieved rulership when he overthrew Adam, although, I think it was Ezekiel, stated that Satan, before he rebelled, had jurisdiction over the Earth before mankind was created. The first words Jesus spoke when he returned after His resurrection were about his authority in the world — He had overthrown Satan.
Jesus human nature.
Jesus, being human as well, was subject to normal human desires.
I suspect the biggest temptation was that if Jesus did it Satan’s way, He would avoid the ordeal of the cross.
Apparently Satan only understood the lust for power and did not realize that Jesus didn’t come to earth just as a power trip but to defeat Satan and redeem the whole of creation which authority was handed over to Satan by Adam when Adam yielded to Satan and listened to him.
Jesus defeated Satan as a man, where Adam failed.
I heard some excellent teaching on this this past weekend.
Satan was created as Lucifer, the most beautiful and powerful angel in all creation.And his pride got to him and he rebelled and took 1/3 of the angels with him.
He still had the power but did not have authority, so he could work on the earth, but did not have the right to.
When God created Adam, God gave Adam AUTHORITY over creation. He was to fill the earth (reproduce) and subdue it (not abuse it).
So Satan tempted Adam and by yielding to that temptation, Adam handed over the keys of authority to Satan. When Jesus resisted Satan's temptation and ultimately died without sinning, He was able to take back that authority, which He did.
Now Satan still has power, but for those who are in Christ, Satan technically no longer has authority over them unless they choose to allow him to have it through sinning or it comes onto them through what parents have allowed into their lives of their family's.
Isaiah 45:7
Acts 13:33!
John 20:17
No US but through Christian example.
Though my sense is in the wisdom of The Law.
Thank God for both.
YHWH
Amen.
It was also a test of what kind of Messiah Jesus would be.
Would Jesus be a political Messiah who would just put in the right kind of government? Or the ACTUAL Messiah?
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