TEXT: Matthew 4:5-7

SUBJECT: Henry on the Temptation of Christ #3

This evening, with God’s help, we’ll move on in the study we began a couple of weeks ago; it’s called Matthew Henry on the Temptation of Christ.

When the Lord was about thirty years old, He was baptized in the Jordan River, at which time the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the shape of a dove and God spoke from heaven, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". It was the high point of His life up until that time. But it didn’t last long. No sooner had He come out of the water than He was driven into the Wilderness by the Holy Spirit to fast and pray for forty days.

When the long vigil was over, our Lord was lonely, worn out, and almost starved to death. It was then that the devil pounced on Him with three deadly temptations.

In the first, he tempted the Lord to not trust His Father.

But the Lord wants no part of it! Quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, He throws back the devil,

That’s the first temptation. The second is right on its heels.

Did you notice the link between this temptation and the one that came just before it? Matthew Henry did. He says

The key words are confident and presume. The Lord has confidence in His Father’s Word. From the bottom of His heart, He believes God will take care of Him because He promised to do it. This is faith.

But the devil demands more: he wants presumption. To "presume" on someone is to take him for granted. A friend tells me to call him anytime I need to talk. I wonder if he means it-really means it. To find out I start calling him at 3:00 in the morning every day! If he really cares for me, he’ll answer the phone and talk as long as I want him to. There’s no emergency, of course, I just call him to talk about the weather or sports or movies or something.

Did my friend make a promise? Yes he did. But is that what he meant by it? Is my late night calling proof that I trust him? Or am I using him and twisting his words to satisfy my vanity?

You know the answer.

Jesus Christ will trust His Father but He will not presume upon Him!

Henry finds an application here:

He’s right here: Satan is very pragmatic; he doesn’t care what sin he gets you into as long as he gets you into it.

• Not wanting to throw his money away, a man becomes a miser. Or, not wanting to be a miser, he spends money like it’s going out of style!

• Terrified of being too lenient, a mother spanks her kids for every mistake. Or, scared of being mean, she lets her kids get away with murder.

• Afraid of being radical, a man compromises everything. Or, afraid of being a compromiser, he is radical about everything.

Beware of extremes! Beware of obeying one part of the Bible if it makes you disobey other parts! No word of God contradicts any other word. It is not easy to fit them all together, but you ought to try hard and not be satisfied until you do. Worry more about disobedience than about inconsistency. If you can’t fit them all together, obey them anyway. If the Word says to take care of your money, take care of it; if it says to be generous, be generous. You can’t see how they go together now, but obey them both and you’ll see.

The devil wants our Lord to presume upon the Father’s goodness or to take His promise for granted. To help Him do it, he

turns to an unlikely source: The Bible.

He quotes Psalm 91:11-12

Henry has quite a bit to say on this one:

First of all, he states the obvious: Satan knows the Bible and knows how to use it to his advantage!

This means: Not every Bible quotation is Biblical! Not every verse that occurs to you, not every verse you read out of context, and not every verse you hear from the pulpit or from the radio is God’s Word. The verses are true, of course, but false meanings can be put into them. That means knowing the Bible isn’t enough: You’ve got to know what the Bible means!

If the devil can quote the Bible, we’ve got to study it with care and pray for understanding.

Secondly, he gives the devil his due,

The best way to tell a lie is to put a little truth in it. A fish will never bite a naked hook, but put something yummy on it (like a worm, an anchovy, or a clam) and he’ll snap it up—hook and all. If you know the Bible at all, Satan won’t mangle it; he won’t say,

That wouldn’t fool anyone. No he mixes truth and error, obedience and disobedience, zeal for God with a little glory for yourself.

In the third place, Henry exposes the devil,

This is a sharp observation (frankly, it’s one I hadn’t noticed before). God promises to bless us as we walk in His ways—not our own ways.

Where does God say He will supply all our needs while we’re sinning? Or He will withhold no good thing from those who ignore Him?

God blesses everyone—including Judas Iscariot! But He promises to bless no one but those who believe in Christ and are trying to serve Him. Do sinners have a promised blessing? Sure we do! When we repent, when we confess, when we seek the Lord while He is near!

You must beware of partial quotations! Not that every verse has to be quoted in full, of course, but we may not edit verses to change their meaning.

Henry’s not through yet. He goes on to say that the devil also

Does the Bible promise that God will forgive all our sins—including the worst ones? It does—thank the Lord—it does promise that! But is the promise there to encourage sin? No, that’s not why it is there. These dear promises are made to us when our hearts are broken with guilt and shame. They make us hope in God, not presume upon Him!

The Lord has been plied with the temptation. Satan is pressing Him to prove His Father’s love. But the Lord won’t hear of it. He rebuts him as He did before—with the Word of God,

The verse is Deuteronomy 6:16. Henry is quick to tell us what it means,

In other words, the Lord is not telling Satan to quick tempting Him, but that there’s no way the Lord is going to tempt or test or prove His Father.

Why not?

The devil has a good argument here: jumping off the Temple would confirm the Lord’s faith in His Father’s goodness, it would encourage others to trust Him, it would notify everyone that He is the Messiah, it would please the angels who are eager to help Him, and it would glorify God by showing the world that He is trustworthy. A lot of good might come out of this.

But the possible good that might come from a sin never justifies the sin. The Lord won’t do it, chiefly, because God has told Him not to. Does our Lord believe that "All things work together for good to those who love God?" And that even "The wrath of man shall praise You?" Sure He does! But the sovereignty of God is not our rule. No, the Law of God is!

As for the other things, Henry says,

In other words, the Lord did not demand proof of God’s love because He already had it: in the Bible! If the Bible won’t satisfy you, nothing will.

Next he says,

This means, though God promises to keep us and provide for us, He ordinarily does it through Providence which includes good sense from us. If God wants to perform a miracle He can. But most of the time, He takes care of His people in quieter ways.

So, if God puts you in a place where you cannot work for a living, He will provide a living in some other way. But, ordinarily, He wants to provide your living through your labor. If God wants you to be in a lion’s den, He can shut the mouth of the big cats. But, normally, He wants you to stay out of the lion’s den.

It’s all a matter of trusting and obeying. Not either/or but both/and.

I know a man who spent more than fifty years on the mission field and now, in old age, he’s got nothing to live on but the charity of God’s people. In that way, the Lord is providing for him. But most of us are not called to that kind of life and need to make other plans for the future—not because we don’t trust God, but because we must not tempt Him to provide by miracle what we could have saved up if we had been more careful.

What was the temptation? It was to presume upon God.

What made it doubly clever? The word of God wrongly applied.

How was it answered? The word of God rightly applied.