The Master of Temptation from Matthew 4

Today I am commenting on Matthew 4:1-11, which reads:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you,  and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’" Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Temptation is something we all face, and we usually face it daily.  Temptation is so common that we use it to sell products.  Remember the potato chip commercial that says “You can’t eat just one!”

We even use temptation to market our entertainment acts.  A mild example of this is the singing group “The Temptations.”

Leave it to the late Christian comedian Jerry Clower to come up with the most unusual example of temptation.  He said that one day he went by his uncle’s farm and saw a hog out in the field with a wooden leg. He stopped and asked his uncle about the pig.

Jerry’s uncle told him, “That pig is like a member of our family.  When our house burned down, he rushed in to save my grandmother.  When our little girl was drowning in the creek, he jumped in and saved her.  He’s just like a member of our family.”

Jerry asked, “Why does he have a wooden leg?”

His uncle replied, “Son, when you have an animal of that quality, you eat him only one ham at a time!”

While we can use temptation to sell products, and while we can make light of it, the truth is that temptation is a serious problem that we all face.  The very fact that we resort to it so much for our own purposes shows us that temptation is powerful and that we often fall prey to it. 

We are tempted to sin in many ways, and none of us in our own power can resist temptation.  There is a Master of Temptation, however and we will see that Master at work today. He will show us the way out of temptation and if we follow Him and His example we will be able ourselves to resist more effectively.

The Identity of the Tempter:

Everything except God has an origin and we know that good things come from God. Jesus said that good and bad cannot come from the same source. God can no more do an evil thing than can the shade of black become white. It will never happen. Evil also has an origin; it originated with Satan, and so did temptation. Knowing where temptation comes from helps us learn its purpose.

Satan was Lucifer; He was the beautiful “Day Star” of Heaven. He was the archangel, the  most privileged servant of God who played beautiful music to glorify God. Sadly for all concerned, he became proud and so he rebelled against God. Because of this he was banished from heaven.

Now, in his bitterness and anger, Satan wants to cause pain. Satan’s response to this conflict was to become bitter and he wants his revenge against God and to hurt Him. He wants to hurt God through  turning God's highest creation, humankind, away from Him.  His main tool for this desperate and dastardly plot is temptation.

His main tactic is not control or possession, but temptation. This is why the Bible calls him a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He is a roaring lion because he is defeated and toothless, and he’s trying to scare people into siding with him against God. Like many dogs, his bark is worse than his bite; but he can entice or scare God's people into sin, then he can hurt God. And that's his real intent!

The Opportunity for the Tempter:

Why did Satan decide to tempt Jesus at this time? Was it because Jesus was in a weakened situation?Was he kicking someone when they were down? No!

In fact Jesus was in a spiritually strong condition. He had just been baptized and heard His Father’s approval. He was completing a fast and the purpose of a fast is to grow closer to God. Jesus may have been closer to God later in His life and ministry, but I would argue that He had never yet been so close to God as when He was in the midst of this fast.

In fact, in Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught:

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Fasting is tough, physically, but it is revitalizing, spiritually!

Satan likes to try to play hardball because he wants to be just like God. He wants to show his power and all through Bible he attacks people during/after spiritual highs:

Adam and Eve in the garden
Noah after the flood
David after the covenant from God
Elijah after Mount Carmel
Paul and Silas during a powerful ministry in Philippi

And Jesus after His baptism and affirmation of God from Heaven.

So, we need to be aware of this trend, this tactic. When things are going well we need to guard our hearts. Satan wants to score as many points as possible by knocking off a successful person, family, or church.

The Methods of the Tempter:

From this passage we can see some of the techniques that Satan uses. These are probably not inclusive of all his wiles, but they do seem to attack three basic motivations in our lives.

First, we see that Satan appeals to the flesh.  I call this the "Temptation to Greed."

We live in a world that is fascinated by physical possessions. As one pastor friend put it, "People try to get all that they can, put it in a can, put a lid on the can, and then sit on the lid!"This temptation makes our flesh our God and it denies that God is sufficient to care for our physical needs.

Next we see that Satan appeals to our vanity. I call this the "Temptation to Gaudiness."

People have always seemed to crave fame and notoriety, and this especially is true today when we create stars of people who have never achieved anything but a mastery of manipulating social media. People want to be known, they just don't want to put in the effort to be known for something they have actually accomplished!

Finally, we see that Satan appeals to our spirit of rebellion. I call this the "Temptation of Glory."

We, like Satan, want to think we are "large and in charge," but there is only one Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent God of the universe. When Frank Sinatra sang about doing things "my way" he is singing the theme song of this temptation, the temptation to place our selves on the throne of our life and not Almighty God.

Again, Satan may use many other techniques than the ones he tried with Jesus, and we must stay on the alert for his manipulations and deceptions. Satan is the chief of liars and we can never trust him!

The Defeat of the Tempter:

Satan tried to play hardball with Jesus. He was going head to head, and hand to hand with God, and while he is powerful, his strength pales in comparison with God's. In fact, the contest wasn't even close. Jesus brushed away Satan with little effort, the way we might brush away a fly or a piece of lint on our jacket.

The results of this contest present us with some important lessons: 

1. Jesus had a relationship with His Father from His childhood.
2. Jesus’ relationship with His Father continued into adulthood.
3. Jesus’ relationship with His Father was fresh and renewed.
4. Jesus made wise use of God’s Word in defeating Satan.
5. We can take advantage of these principles as well and if we do, we too can have victory.

Consider what Paul taught us in 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says, 

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

We need to remember, that while Satan is a cruel liar, God showed His true nature in that passage of Scripture and in Matthew 4:

He gives us help to escape the tempter.

He nurtures us and cares for us.

Jesus showed us the way to use Scripture to overpower the tempter.

Conclusion:

In our text for today, we have seen how Jesus took Satan's best shot and walked away unscathed. He is truly the Master of Temptation, and if we let Him be our Master, then we can master temptation as well. If we turn to Him in times of testing, He will help us and, like Him, we can be victorious.

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt

Eyewitnesses from 2 Peter 1

Today I am commenting on 2 Peter 1:16-21, which reads:


For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Often,  when a preacher has made a statement in a sermon, and he wants to see if the congregation is still engaged with him, he'll ask,"Can I get a witness?" For the early church, "Can I get a witness?" was more than just a throwaway line from a preacher. It was central to their ministry in, and out of, the church.

Even the newest church member among us will have heard of Acts 1:8, which tells us, ". . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The early church was determined to follow this command of Jesus and be witnesses for Him throughout the known world.

Peter, of course, was one of the Apostles and he, too, was a witness of and for Jesus as he describes in our focal passage for today.

Witness:

The earliest Christians were Jews and their Bible was the Old Testament. They did not set out to write a new Bible because they believed that the Old Testament contained an abundant amount of prophecies and other passages that proved that Jesus was the Messiah. Their desire was simply to follow God's command to be a witness for Christ in the world.

They did not need to write a new Bible because they had been trained all of their lives to follow the Old Testament Law and Prophets. They knew Deuteronomy 19:15, which directed that,  "A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." The early church had far more than two or three witnesses to the life and ministry of Christ!

The early church had the testimony of the eleven Apostles, plus the testimony of the seventy that Jesus had sent out two by two. They had the testimony of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, as well as that of Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus. They also had the testimony of the disciples who were on the Emmaus Road, as well as that of Paul who met Jesus on the Road to Damascus.

If a preacher asked, "Can I get a witness?" in a meeting of the early church, he'd get all the witnesses he could stand! That's actually a good thing for us, today, also. As Peter said, our faith is not based on myths, but on the testimony of hundreds and even thousands of eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of our Lord.

Word:

Of course, we no longer have any living eyewitnesses of Christ, and we haven't had any for many centuries now, but we still have their testimonies about Him. Blessedly for us, the early church decided that they needed to record these testimonies for future generations, and so they collected the four Gospels along with the epistles of Paul and Peter, as well as those of John and some others, and created what we now know as the New Testament.

The creation of the New Testament canon did not begin soon after the ascension of Christ, because, as I noted above, they had the actual witnesses themselves who could attest to the facts of what had gone before. At a certain point, however, these witnesses began to die, and the church became concerned that their testimonies would become lost, and, led and inspired by the Holy Spirit, they recorded the New Testament as we know it today.

While we know that the personal witness of a follower of Christ is powerful and God has used such testimonies to covert untold number of people, the written Word is also powerful. I, personally, met a former Muslim man in West Africa who was converted to Christ by reading the New Testament. He had heard all of his life about the Injil, which is the Arabic name for the Gospels, but he had never read them. He searched for a copy, and in reading the Gospels was converted to Christ! He only met with a Christian after he had decided to follow Christ!

Will:

Of course, the fact that Christian witness moved from personal, verbal testimony to also include the written text of the New Testament was not a surprise to God. In fact, far from being a surprise, it was a part of His plan all along. It was not human will which decided that a written testimony was needed, but it was the will of God as His people, inspired by the Holy Spirit, recorded His Word for the generations to come.

When we reflect upon the will of God for His Word, we should also consider what Paul taught Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14-17, which says:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

From Paul's mentoring of Timothy we see that not only is God's Word a key to evangelism and conversion, but it is vital also for equipping and discipleship. As Christians read and study the Bible, they are better equipped to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ, which makes their testimony to unbelievers even more persuasive and powerful.

Clearly, it is God's will that we witness in all forms possible,  in word (both written and spoken) as well as in deed and in attitude.

Conclusion:

Acts 1:8 is not only a command but a prophecy. We will be His witnesses, but the open question is, will we be good witnesses, indifferent witnesses, or bad witnesses?

Clearly, the will of God is that we would use His Word to be good witnesses for Him. By knowing and internalizing the Scriptures,  we are empowered and equipped to do the basic ministry that all Christians are called to do: be good witnesses for Christ in all parts of our lives and in all ways that we represent Him.

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt

Workers Together from 1 Corinthians 3

Today I am commenting on 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, which reads:

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

One of the most powerful ministries I have ever been involved with is Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. Each year, after storms or floods or other disasters have wreaked havoc in a community, hundreds or even thousands of ordinary church members volunteer their time and energy to perform an extraordinary ministry by helping people recover from disaster.

One of the key features of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is teamwork. Whether it be cooking thousands of meals a day or cutting and removing downed trees to providing emergency childcare, Disaster Relief is a team ministry. What one person can’t do on their own, a team of people can do quickly and efficiently.

Teamwork means cooperation, and cooperation means volunteers must possess a certain level of maturity and the willingness to humbly serve. If these characteristics are missing, then teamwork fails and then the team fails to do the work. This is the very situation that Paul addressed in our focal passage for today.

Working Together Means Growing-Up:

Everyone loves babies. They are cute and adorable and harmless . . . until they start to cry! I really believe that God perfectly designed a baby’s cry to get the attention of any adult in the vicinity. And a baby’s cry will certainly spur adults into action, mostly to respond in love to the child but also, to some extent, to silence the noise that will get on our . . .  very . . . last . . . nerve.

Everyone loves babies, but everyone wants babies to grow-up also. As I often told my wife in those years we were approaching the empty-nest syndrome, we raise up our children to send them out, not to hamstring them so we can keep them at home. Babies were designed by God to grow and mature, and when that doesn’t happen something has gone wrong.

Everyone loves baby Christians, too, and we expect there to be growing pains. New Christians, like new babies often cry out when they are scared, uncomfortable, or hungry, or when they just don’t know what to do. Paul would graciously admit that is a natural stage in the life of a new Christian, but he rightfully insisted that new Christians must grow and mature. If that doesn’t happen, then something has gone wrong . . .  dreadfully wrong.

Babies don’t make good teammates, not do people who are infantile in their maturity!

Working Together Means Knowing Who We Are:

Some commentators have said that the institution of slavery was the original sin of both the United States and Southern Baptist Convention. It is hard to argue with that premise. Both our nation and the SBC still suffer the consequences of that sin that both have rightfully forsaken. Because of our dark history regarding slavery, we often will miss the fact that probably all the “servants” and “stewards” mentioned in the Bible were slaves or indentured servants of some kind.

Slaves, by definition, must place their masters’ concerns above their own. They must satisfy their masters’ wants and needs, and they must be good stewards of their masters’ property. Their goal is to make their masters successful, profitable, or powerful. Their concern is not their own reputations, but their masters’ reputations. This is a lesson that Paul was trying to impart to his readers.

Even though Apollos and Paul both had powerful ministries, Paul knew that they were simply servants of the Most High God. They were nothing in themselves, but their lives only had meaning in relationship to God. Like John the Baptist, their attitude was “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Paul would have approved of Harry Truman’s comment that, “It is amazing what you can accomplish of you do not care who gets the credit.” People with such attitudes make great team members.

We are servants of the Most High God! We should live so that He increases, which means we must decrease. Keeping our eyes on that goal makes us good teammates.

Working Together Means Knowing What We Are Supposed to be Doing:

Amos 3:3 asks the simple question, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” It is impossible for two people to go the same way if they are not going to the same place. Sooner or later their paths will diverge. Likewise, we cannot work together unless we agree on what we are supposed to be doing.

We are supposed to tend to God’s Garden. Let’s remember together what Jesus taught us in John 15:1-8, which reads,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

The world offers us many different goals. Among other things, it promotes fame, fortune, power, recreation, and a life of ease and consumption. God’s Kingdom, however, has a starkly different and more eternally useful purpose: tending God’s Garden.

Good teammates focus on the mission and they help each other accomplish it.

Working Together Means Knowing Who Brings Success:

Here’s a hint: it isn’t us!

One of the major responsibilities in my current ministry is to organize meetings and ministry projects, and to plan and execute volunteer mission trips. God has given me the gifts and talents I need to make these events successful, but I often find myself fretting and worrying over them. I like to see things done well; it is one of my core values. Truth be told, however, I often take on too much responsibility for making these events a success.

What I forget is exactly what Paul was telling the church at Corinth to remember: it is our Lord who brings the harvest. Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor who empowers our pastoral care. He is the Great Physician who heals out bodies and our souls. He is the Good Shepherd who protects and guides His sheep. He is the Sower who scatters the seed, tends the field, and brings the bounty. Make no mistake,  if anything good comes our of our ministry it is because our Lord made it happen!

Of course, while we should not become arrogant at any ministry success we may experience serving our God, we must also realize that God has chosen to work through His people. And, of course, He expects His people to cooperate with Him and do the work He has asked us to do. We must not sit back on our salvation and glibly assume that God will make a way somehow. God has chosen us to labor with Him in His vineyard. Does there exist a greater honor than that for a servant of the Most High God?

Good teammates are diligent and responsible, but don’t take on themselves the responsibilities God has designated as His Own.

Conclusion:

 I am a Southern Baptist, so for me, the idea of cooperation in the service of our Lord is vital.

Each Southern Baptist Church is autonomous, which means it is self-governing (ideally under the guidance and nurture of the  Holy Spirit). While Southern Baptist Churches are autonomous, they should not be independent. It is inherent in the definition of Southern Baptist churches that they voluntarily cooperate to share the Gospel with a fallen world.

The need for cooperation is not just limited to cooperation between churches, but also within individual churches as well. Pastors and other church leaders cannot coerce church members to participate in worship or ministry activities. While good leadership techniques can encourage cooperation by church members, it is up to every church member play their part in the ministry of the local church.

We truly should be workers together with God!

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt