TEXT: Matthew 4:3-4

SUBJECT: Henry on the Temptation of Christ #2

Tonight, with God’s blessing, we’ll move on in our study of Matthew Henry on the Temptation of Christ. Henry, you know, was a great Puritan pastor and writer; his Commentary on the Whole Bible remains the best-selling—and maybe the best—book of its kind in English. If you don’t have it, get it. If you have it, read it. Don’t let the size intimidate you: you can start anywhere and soon find a blessing. Don’t worry about the language either: the commentary is easy to read.

Last time, we looked at the circumstances of our story. What’s going on? It’s a battle between the Lord Jesus Christ and Satan. The war began right after the Fall of Man when God put enmity between the serpent’s seed and the Seed of the Woman. Thus far, they’ve fought through proxies—other men and angels—but here they square off face-to-face. The devil attacks our Lord at His weakest moment—when He’s lonely and tired and hungry. Yet even then the Lord Jesus Christ swats him as if he’s fly! This is a Savior we can trust! He’s got the power and the wisdom and the courage and the love to stand up for us and win the day!

Resist the devil and he will flee—not because he’s scared of you—but because he cannot face the Lord who is standing with you. The victory our Lord won over Satan is not only His, but yours and mine too!

When David slaughtered the Amalekites, he didn’t take all the booty for himself; he shared it with his men—including the ones who didn’t do much! What a generous king he was! But far less than His Son and Lord!

That’s a bird’s eye view of our story. Now we’ll zoom in on some of the details.

The first temptation is also the one that is best known. V.3 has it,

What is Satan tempting our Lord to do? If he had told Him to turn the stones into a feast, we’d understand that he’s plying Him with the sin of gluttony or drunkenness. A man who hadn’t eaten for six weeks would make a pig of himself, I suppose; and wine on a stomach that empty would surely make him drunk with even a sip or two! But it’s not gourmet food or vintage wine he calls for, but plain, ordinary bread.

Or so it would seem. But Henry knows better:

The Lord did not go into the wilderness accidentally. He was sent there—sent by the Holy Spirit on orders from the Father. If God wanted His Son there without food, then He would sustain Him without food. That is the implied promise. Which our Lord believes.

Satan is whispering "Don’t trust Your Father"; the Lord’s belly must be screaming the same thing. But He says no to both! He will not doubt His Father’s goodness or wonder if the promises are true.

I’ve never been tempted to turn stones into bread. But unbelief tempts me every day. It tempts me every time I’m not thankful for what I have. It tempts me every time I want more than I need. It tempts me every time I resent what others have. It tempts me every time I feel sorry for myself. It tempts me every time I complain and gripe and murmur. At bottom all these sins are sheer unbelief.

What kind of God is the Lord? Is He a God who doesn’t know what we need? Or a God who knows, but doesn’t care? Or maybe, a God who knows and cares, but can’t do anything for us? Does the Bible ever say things like these about the Lord?

In fact, it does. But in every case it is the devil (or one of his spokesmen) saying it. He tells Eve that God is keeping something from her, something she needs: The knowledge of good and evil. In another wilderness, he tells the people that God has brought them into the desert to kill them with thirst, to starve them to death, or to bore them out of their minds with this manna! Here Satan repeats himself: God cannot be trusted—He brought you out here to starve you; you’ve been praying for forty days and what has it gotten you? Nothing!

This is what Satan thinks of God. But is he right? No He isn’t. The Lord Himself knew His Father like no one else. He said He could be trusted.

God is trustworthy—"He cannot deny Himself". His Word is no less reliable—

A couple has been married for twenty five years. The man wants to get his dear wife a special present for their silver anniversary. He goes to a find jeweler and selects a silver bracelet. "Is it pure silver?" he asks. "It is". But the man isn’t so sure: "Prove it—put it in the fire and if it’s pure, I’ll take it". The jeweler puts it in the fire and—there’s not a spot of iron or copper or brass to be found. "Is that good enough for you?" No. Do it again. He does it a second time. Still not satisfied. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth melting. "Well maybe, but I’m not sure". One more time does the trick. The silver has been tried by fire—seven times melted without a drop of alloy. "I’ll take it" says the man.

God’s promises have been tested seven times says the Psalmist—and we know far more than seven times. And never—not even once—has anyone found a lie, a contradiction, or a discrepancy in it. The promise is as pure and clean and sure as the One who made it—"God cannot lie".

When tempted to not trust God, we have to remember the promise: "No good thing will He withhold from those who fear Him". He has promised to provide for us in life and death and beyond!

If you truly believe in the goodness of God and that His promises are sure, you won’t feel He’s forgotten you or cheating you out of what you deserve. Trust the Lord and His promises and—poof!—envy and self-pity, discontent, ingratitude and murmuring disappear.

Long ago, a woman felt swindled by God, that He was not giving her what she needed. So she took what she wanted and destroyed herself, her husband, and the whole human race. You know the lady—she’s your grandma: her name is Eve.

When tempted to do the same thing Himself, our Savior made the other choice: to take God’s Word for it. And by that act, He undid the harm His grandmother did to us all.

And now you’re in the wilderness: Satan and his servants are telling you you don’t have enough, that the promises of God are false or— at best—way off in the future, but no good now. What will you do when you hear the voice in your head? What Eve did? Or what your Savior did?

God give you the wisdom to choose well.

Satan has tempted the Lord to not trust His Father. How does He respond to it? Note: He doesn’t think about it or pray about it or consult His friends or craft an argument against it. Henry says,

If the Lord Jesus Christ relies on the Word of God to resist the devil, why do we turn to other things? My hero, Martin Luther said, "Satan was the first lawyer" (meaning he could make the guiltiest client seem innocent). He also called "Reason a harlot"—that is, it is not to be trusted.

Luther was right: only the Word of God baffles the devil. It is the only argument he cannot answer; it’s the sword of the Spirit that even Satan is afraid of.

We don’t have the mastery of the Word that our Lord had, of course. But I’ve found that just quoting a verse is helpful—any verse, in fact, because it reminds me of God and my obligation to obey Him. If you want to resist the devil commit Bible verses to memory. In particular, memorize verses against anger or lust or laziness or whatever your sin is. It will do you good.

The verse quoted was Deuteronomy 8:3. It was a perfect answer to the devil’s temptations:

Remember: the temptation is not about making bread, it’s about trusting God. What does this verse say about trusting the Lord? Several things: Henry says,

The devil insinuates that if the Lord is really God’s Son, He wouldn’t allow hard thing to happen to Him. Baloney! Says the Lord! Israel was God’s son and very much loved, and spent forty years in a wilderness. Tough times don’t prove God doesn’t care!

This is another good point: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" was first told to a people who were doubting God’s goodness and His power to feed a million people in a wasteland. Yet He did just that. They didn’t live on rich farms or fat cattle or mega grocery stores: It was the Word of God that fed them. And the same word would sustain the Lord Jesus Christ—and everyone else who trusts God.

The Lord could have eased the fears of His people by stuffing their sacks with a forty-year supply of food. But He didn’t. He let them get hungry and wonder about their next meal. Not because He enjoyed their fears, but to teach them faith and patience. And to prove to them that no one who waits on the Lord shall be disappointed.

Henry closes the section with a lesson. He’s hinted at it throughout the pages, but now he spells it out,

I can’t add anything to this: better is a dinner of herbs where love is than the fatted calf with strife. Better to be a poor man with a good conscience that the richest man alive with a conscience that is bad.