- Text: Luke 4:1-13, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 3
- Date: Sunday morning, January 26, 2025
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/exploringhisword/2025-s02-n003-z-satans-same-old-strategy.mp3
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Transcript:
If you’re ever in any kind of competitive situation, one of the best things you can do is to acquaint yourself with what your opponent is going to do and how they’re going to act, what kind of strategy and what kind of tactics they’re going to use. Back during World War II, General Patton used to read books about warfare that were written by General Rommel, the German general that his forces were going to be up against in North Africa. In the Revolutionary War, the American troops were able to inflict a lot of damage on a significantly larger force because they realized some things about the British troops that they were going to come into battle in their bright red, you know, their red coats that were going to be visible.
And they were going to stay in formation and they were going to follow their officers where the Americans realized we can hide in the trees and the bushes and we can hide behind stuff and jump out and they’re going to stay in formation. They’re going to make it easy for us. In more everyday situations, now this may surprise you, I’ve never been a football player or football coach.
That shouldn’t surprise anybody. I’ve been an occasional football watcher, but I understand that sometimes coaches will watch videos of whatever team they’re going to be playing against soon, watching them from previous games, learning how they play and how they react in different situations. In something that’s a lot more my speed, I was coaching some of the kids from the school in an academic tournament this weekend or this week, this past week, and that’s one of those deals where they ask questions and they buzz in and they try to answer.
And we encourage the kids, buzz as quickly as you think you might know the question. And they get some wrong and they get some right, but they miss 100% of the ones they don’t buzz in on. So we want them to be fast and not hesitate.
But there was one team that I thought, are they even awake? I think somebody may have buzzed in one or two times out of the 36 questions they were asked in that match. And so at one of the breaks in play, we pulled our team aside and said, you know what, forget what we told you about jumping in and being first. With this team, you have plenty of time.
Let them finish the question. Think about it for a minute. Maybe take a coffee break and think about it because you’ve got time.
You watch what your opponent is going to do and you adjust your strategy. Well, we are up against an opponent. We have a common opponent as believers in particular, as human beings in general. We have a common opponent that we’re up against. In this case, we have a common enemy.
And we’re going to talk today about what his strategy is for us. Because it was on full display in his dealings with Jesus. And we can learn not only from what the enemy did, but also from how Jesus handled it.
And so as we’re continuing our study of the book of Luke, we’re going to be in chapter 4 this morning. And we’re going to look at this strategy that Satan has used all throughout history. And maybe learn from how Jesus handled it, how we can overcome his strategy.
So we’re going to be in Luke chapter 4, and once you’ve turned there with me, if you’ll stand as we read together from God’s Word. If you can’t find Luke chapter 4 or don’t have your Bible, you can stand with us anyway and it’ll be on the screen. But follow along as we read this.
We’re going to look at the first 13 verses of chapter 4. It says, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, he became hungry.
And the devil said to him, If you’re the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone. And he led him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said to him, I will give you all this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you worship before me, it shall all be yours. Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
And he led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you’re the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it is written, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you. And on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
And Jesus answered and said to him, It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. When the devil had finished every temptation, he left him until an opportune time. And you may be seated. What we see in this passage and in the other places in Matthew and Mark where it talks about the same event, we see Satan coming to Jesus at a moment of human weakness.
Now, we understand that Jesus is God. Jesus has always been God. But when Jesus came to earth, He took on a human nature without giving up His divine nature.
And that’s a little bit difficult to understand because it’s not something that’s ever happened at any other point in history. It’s a category of one, that Jesus would be fully God and fully man. And so throughout the Gospels, we see this back and forth where we see aspects of His godhood show up and we see aspects of His manhood show up.
And this is one of those cases where He’s out there in the wilderness for 40 days not eating. As a human being, He’s hungry. As any of us would be.
I couldn’t go 40 hours. Sometimes my kids act like they can’t go 40 minutes. And Jesus was out there in the wilderness for 40 days.
So not only do we have the physical weakness of just being hungry, but do you ever get in a bad mood when you’re hungry? I think Snickers made a whole series of commercials about that. You’re not you when you’re hungry.
You need to eat a Snickers. As a matter of fact, when I preached through Mark and we got to this, I think I brought in a bunch of Snickers for everybody who was here that Sunday night. Sorry, I didn’t think that through today.
But we’re just not ourselves when we’re hungry. And add to that that he’s probably been by himself for 40 days. And those of us who are introverts, we are energized by solitude, but still you need to be around people.
And after a while, it begins to stress you out if you’re not around anybody. That’s why they put people in solitary confinement as a punishment. So he’s in a weakened state from a human standpoint.
And Satan shows up at just that moment ready to attack. And this is what Satan does. This is where Satan will try to get us.
Do you remember what happened just before these 40 days? Anybody? What did we talk about last week that happened?
He was baptized. Okay, I was hoping somebody remembered. He was baptized.
And at that baptism, there’s the situation where he looks up while he’s coming out of the water, and he sees the skies opening, and the Holy Spirit comes down, and everybody sees the Spirit land on him in bodily form, looking like a dove. and the voice of the Father is heard booming out of the heavens. And what did the Father say?
This is my Son in whom I’m very pleased. And He said that for the benefit of the crowd. So there’s this moment where Jesus’ ministry kicks off and He is bragged on by the Father.
He is affirmed by the Father. He’s affirmed by the Spirit in front of everybody. And that would be a spiritual mountaintop moment.
And he leaves from there and goes off into the wilderness and comes into this weakened state. And I think a lot of times that’s where Satan will attack us is when we’ve just had a spiritual high point and then we come back down into reality. That’s where he’ll that’s where he’ll get us.
Satan tries this with me every Sunday night. We’ve just had a good day at church. Usually we’ve had opportunities to discuss God’s word.
We’ve worshiped together and then coming down off of that. We go home, we get everybody ready for bed. Charla and I eat dinner and usually she falls asleep before I do.
And I start thinking about how horrible I am at this job and all the mistakes I made throughout the day. Oh, you should have said that better. Oh, you should have taken care of that.
You should. And Satan will do that to us every time. He’ll start to attack us when we’ve come out of the mountaintop, down from the mountaintop and into the valley.
And so Jesus was attacked at this point, and Satan tried everything he could think of to cause Jesus to sin. Most commentators don’t think that Satan only tempted Jesus with three things. Satan probably pestered Jesus a whole lot more than this.
But these are the three things that are recorded in the three Gospels that mention it, because they do give us an example of all the kinds of things that Jesus was attacked with. But as we’ll talk about a little later on, the Bible says Jesus was tempted as we are in every but without sin. And so Satan came at Jesus at what would have been the weakest moment that he would have had in his human nature at this beginning stage of his ministry when he’s just come down off the mountaintop and through everything he had at Jesus to try to cause him to sin.
Satan is crafty. Satan is good at his job. If his job is to try to get us to sin, he does a fantastic job at it.
And because of that, we will look at the temptations that we face, and we’ll look at Satan’s attacks, and we’ll think, there’s no way I could stand up to this. But also, we see in this passage, as crafty as Satan is, he’s not super creative. He has a very limited set of tricks to use against us.
Now, what makes me say that he has a limited set of tricks is that when we see, When we get to see behind the scenes in Scripture, what Satan is doing involving himself in trying to tempt somebody, because a lot of times we just have the story that so-and-so was tempted, but when the curtain is peeled back and we start to see Satan’s role in it, he’s doing the same thing every time. The first thing he’ll do is he’ll appeal to our appetites in order to try to sell sin. And sometimes he doesn’t have to sell real hard, because we just say, you know, take my money.
I’m ready to buy. Satan comes along with a temptation and we say, yes, please. And it shouldn’t be that way.
But he’ll come trying to appeal to our appetites. You notice he doesn’t try to sell us things we don’t want. You ever had somebody try to sell you something you just didn’t want and just can’t get away from them fast enough.
Satan doesn’t do that. He comes to us with things that we’re saying we have to fight not to say, oh, tell me more. Let me hear more about that.
and there’s a passage that ties in with this one that we’re going to look at this this morning briefly because it shows exactly what he’s doing here in first john chapter 2 the apostle john talks about this very thing and he says do not love the world nor the things in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not in him now this is not talking about in the same way that god so loved the world talking about the people in it this is talking about the world system and the things that the world has to offer. He says, don’t love those things, because if we love those things, the Father is not in us. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.
There are three major things that are behind sin, three major things that Satan uses to try to entice us to sin, And it’s these three things that John just mentioned in 1 John 2. They are the same things that show up here in Luke 4 and the other places in the Gospels where it talks about the temptation of Jesus. And they show up elsewhere in Scripture.
He uses these three lures to try to catch us. The first is the lust of the flesh. And going through here, trying to think of it.
I ended up teaching on this to the boys’ Bible study group the other day, a couple weeks ago I should say, and try to think how to explain these things without getting into conversations I’m not ready to have. How do I explain this to the boys? And this came to me, this is how I make sense of these things, that the lust of the flesh is the things we want to experience.
It’s anything that makes the flesh feel good. It can include things like gluttony. It can include things like sexual immorality.
It can include the whole gambit of things that just make us feel good. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience things. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel good.
But it’s what are we wanting to experience and for what reasons? Satan came and tempted Jesus with the lust of the flesh. When he came to Jesus thinking about I know you’re hungry.
You’ve been out here for 40 days in the wilderness and you’re hungry. There’s something your body is craving and Satan came in verse 3 and tempted him with food and said, why don’t you take one of those rocks and turn it into bread? You can do that.
And he said, if you’re the son of God, why don’t you take one of those rocks and make it into bread? Now, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing inherently sinful about wanting to eat. God designed us to need to eat.
Where it becomes sinful is, I think, where, oh, if I were to go to Ann’s country kitchen and say, I want that whole pie or two. let’s be honest, I want all of them. I want everything behind that glass.
That’s a problem. So why was it sinful? Why was it sinful to say, hey, if you’re hungry, why don’t you make some stones into bread?
You can do that. Jesus is the one who spoke those stones into creation, into existence. Jesus can turn water into wine.
Jesus could speak bread into existence. Why is it sinful that he would do this? It’s because he was calling on Jesus to doubt the Father’s provision, because the Spirit had led him out there.
He was out there for a purpose that the Father had sent him, the Spirit had led him out there to fulfill this purpose. Presumably, he was spending some of this time in isolation in prayer with the Father, and knowing that the Father would would provide for him when the time came. And Satan very subtly tries to undermine that relationship and the trust that he would have in the Father by saying, if you’re really the Son of God, why don’t you just make some bread out of these rocks?
Now the very last thing that’s recorded in the text right before this, as far as happening, because there’s the genealogy right before this, but the last thing recorded happening is the Father saying, this is my beloved Son. And now Satan is saying, if you really are, why don’t you make some bread? And this would be Jesus having to take into his own hands his own provision in order to prove that he is who the Father already said he was.
And so it’s not the bread or the being hungry that’s sinful, but it’s appealing to him to not demonstrate the faith in the Father that he was supposed to. And in order to get him to do that, Satan dangles that lust of the flesh and says, I know you’re hungry. What would be wrong with just making some bread right here?
Then we have the lust of the eyes, where the lust of the flesh are the things we want to experience. The lust of the eyes are the things we want to have. Christi was talking to the kids about envy and seeing something you just had to have.
Have you ever seen something that you just had to have? We probably all have. It’s not wrong to have things.
It’s not wrong to want to have things. Again, it depends on to have and the reasons for it and how we go about it. But Jesus was wandering around out in this desert area.
This word that’s translated wilderness can also mean desert. It’s a place where there’s not a lot of anything around. Rocks and sand and brush, but not a lot of anything else.
And the Apostle Paul tells us about how Jesus stepped out of the glory of heaven. That he stepped away from what he was entitled to as far as being worshiped and served by the angels. That’s what Philippians 2 is all about.
And Jesus has gone from that into this. And so Satan comes and and tries to appeal to him with that. Don’t you want to have the glory and the kingdoms?
Don’t you want to possess all these things? And so Satan comes to him and says, you know, all these kingdoms have been given to me. They’re mine and I can give them to whoever I want to.
Don’t you deserve to that. I’ve always been puzzled by this because they belong to Jesus anyway. All the kingdoms of this world belong to Jesus anyway.
He made them. One day he’s going to reassert his control, his dominion over them. Satan is trying to offer something that he does not own, that Jesus already does.
But, you know, in the moment, maybe he thinks he’s got Jesus over a barrel with weakness. And he comes to him and says, don’t you want to have these? No, Jesus is already going to have them.
So why is it sinful? What makes it sinful is that verse 7 tells us that Satan was calling on Jesus to worship Him. When He says worship before me, He’s talking about getting down on His face before Satan and worshiping Him.
That’s all you got to do. Just got to do it once and you’ll have everything you could ever want. And Satan will come to us with that deal. Just do things my way.
You can have everything you want, everything you deserve. And then there’s the pride of life. Those are the things that we want to be.
Jesus, again, had just been publicly affirmed by the Father, this is my son, but Satan tempted him to prove his sonship by performing a sign. This goes on all throughout the Gospels. People are wanting Jesus to perform signs for their purposes, to prove himself.
There’s the temptation to say, oh, you don’t believe I am who I say I am? Let me prove it. And we’ve probably all felt that pride at some point or another.
And Satan basically says, if you really are, then prove it. And he goes to the scriptures. He goes to the scriptures and misuses some scriptures from Psalm 91.
Satan says, after all, the scriptures say he will command his angels concerning you to guard you. And on their hands, they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. He’s saying, God’s got you.
If you’re really his son, he’s got you. He’ll take care of you. So while we’re up here at the pinnacle of the temple, the highest spot, why don’t you just throw yourself down.
And of course, he’s not going to let his angels let you fall and hurt yourself. You know, prove to me once and for all that you are who you say you are. I think a lot of us in our pride would take that deal and say, well, yeah, let me prove it.
See, Satan understands what drives humans, and he’s going to use one or more of these things as bait. The next time he comes after you trying to get you to do wrong, he’s going to come at you in at least one of those ways, maybe a combination of but every temptation he throws at you, that’s all he’s got are those three things. And we would do well to recognize what he’s doing and what he’s going to come at us with.
So when that bait’s dangling there and it looks so good, we recognize, wait a minute, that’s a trick. God’s word told me he was going to do that. His other tactic is that he twists God’s word in order to justify sin.
He won’t just come at you trying to appeal to your appetites to sell it. He’ll come at you twisting God’s word to make you think it’s okay. In verses 10 and 11, we just talked about how he did that telling Jesus throw yourself down because God’s word says this but he misquoted it he misinterpreted it he misapplied it when you go back to that passage in the Old Testament what it’s talking about is God’s care for his people and it’s sort of the image of when you would hold a toddler up as they’re learning to walk and you would walk with them and you’d hold them up so they don’t fall and hurt themselves so they don’t trip over a rock and Satan is twisting that scripture to make it sound like, yeah, it’s totally cool to throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple so that he and his angels will lift you up.
He’s trying to convince him that that passage is about being reckless and God will just take care of it. And that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about taking steps of obedience and trusting that God is going to care for you as you’re learning to walk with Him.
And he takes it out of context and he misuses it. And that’s what he’ll always do. You know what?
You can see that all over social media today. People will put up there. I don’t know if TikTok is back online or not, but if it is, you can see on TikTok.
You can see on Instagram. You can see on Facebook people posting videos. Oh, this is okay.
And here’s this verse to prove it. And they take one part of one verse out of context. That’s why we should never base anything on a Bible verse.
Look at the verses around it. Look at the context. What is it talking about?
What does the rest of God’s word say about this? Because God’s Word, properly interpreted, will never teach us to sin. But He will twist God’s Word.
So when one little snippet of something from God’s Word is taken as a pretext of why this is okay or that, or you can do it just this once or just a little bit, we need to understand that is Satan’s tactic to try to twist God’s Word to justify our sin. And Satan has always relied on these two tactics. If we go back to the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted humanity with those same tactics.
He came and he appealed to our appetites. That’s why Genesis 3. 6 says the woman saw that the tree was good for food.
That’s appealing to the lust of the flesh. That it was a delight to the eyes. That’s the lust of the eyes.
I want to have that fruit. I want to eat that fruit. I want to have that fruit.
And that the tree was desirable to make one wise. That’s the pride of life. And in that same instance in the garden, when God had told Adam, do not eat the fruit of that tree or you’ll die.
That one tree, do not eat the fruit of that tree. Satan came and said, is it true that God said you shouldn’t touch any of the trees in the garden or you’ll die? And he began to twist God’s word.
And he began to try to make God say something he didn’t say until eventually man was so twisted up and confused that he gave in to his sinful desires and he walked away from God’s plan for him. This is all Satan does. We need to be wary of Satan and his tricks.
We need to be on guard, but we also don’t need to give him too much credit. These are his only tactics. They’re consistent throughout Scripture that these are his only tactics to appeal to those three appetites and to twist Scripture to convince us it’s okay.
And when we start to see that, and as we’re walking with the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit, it will make it easier to identify, no, I know what you’re doing. I know what you’re dangling in front of me. I know what you’re twisting to make it seem like it’s okay and it’s not going to work.
It makes it easier to resist those temptations when it comes along. And the example of this is given to us by Jesus because Jesus prevailed where everyone else falls short. Jesus overcame all of these temptations.
And one of the ways he did it is by standing on the authority of God’s Word. If you’re reading the same translation I am, you’ll see these red letters that are the words of Jesus throughout this story, and they’re in all caps, a lot of them, because they are quoting the Old Testament. Some of your translations may have that as well, some of them may not.
But verse 4, Jesus answers the thing about the stone becoming bread and says, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. That’s quoting Deuteronomy 6, I’m sorry, Deuteronomy 8. 3.
Then when he says, worship me and all will become yours. In verse 8, Jesus says, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. That’s Deuteronomy 6.
13. When Satan says, throw yourself down, even twist scripture to try to convince him. In verse 12, Jesus said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. That’s Deuteronomy 6.
16. What’s he doing? He’s quoting scripture and he’s quoting it in context.
Now, Jesus is able to do that because He’s God. He’s familiar with the Scripture. But it’s a lesson to us that we need to follow his example and be familiar with what God’s Word says as well.
But more importantly, I don’t mean to make it sound like that’s not important. That is hugely important. We need to be aware of Satan’s tactics, and we need to be familiar enough with God’s Word to stand on its authority when the temptations come.
But as important as that is, even more important is that this story is not about Satan. This story is about Jesus and how Jesus overcame. And this time of temptation and testing that Jesus went through was part of the Father’s plan for Him and for us because this test enabled Him to minister to us as our great sinless high priest. Jesus is the one who is able to intercede on our behalf with the Father.
Hebrews 4. 15 says, We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness. Our high priest, the one who stands between us and the Father, He understands your weaknesses.
He understands the temptations you face. He understands the attacks that Satan has put on you, is putting on you now, or will put on you until the day you die. He understands all of it because he went through it too.
The passage continues and says, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are. Because he’s experienced the same thing. But the big difference between him and us are these last three words of Hebrews 4.
15 where it says, yet without sin. He experienced all the same temptations that you and I experience, but He never once sinned. And that means that we have a high priest, Jesus Christ, who understands our weaknesses, who understands the attacks that we’re under because He’s been through them as well.
But not only that, a high priest who defeated those temptations, who was victorious over sin. And because of this, He calls us to resist temptation and trust in Him as our sinless Savior. As believers, we need to do both of those things.
We need to resist temptation. We don’t get to say, oh, well, because Jesus paid for it, it’s all forgiven anyway, so I can do what I want. If that’s our position, it tells us there’s something wrong in the heart, and it’s a good shot you may not be born again.
At the very least, you want to spend some time dealing with the Lord about that. As believers who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we should be driven to resist temptation, to resist sin. But also, he’s not putting the whole thing on us to say, you’ve got to measure up.
You’ve got to be good enough. You’ve got to try harder. You’ve got to earn this yourself.
He recognizes that we are going to fall short. The goal is for us to sin less and less, but we never become sinless on this side of eternity. And that’s why it matters so much that not only has he given us the example of how to resist temptation, but he actually defeated temptation on our behalf.
Because when we do fall short, we have the grace of that high priest who offered himself up for us. Who was not only the high priest, but the sacrifice so that our sins could be paid for. So that when we are too weak to stand up to the temptation, and we fall short, and we let our father down, we are able to rest on his grace and the forgiveness that he purchased for us.
And so the hero of the story is not us learning how to overcome the temptation just by following Jesus’ example. The hero of the story is Jesus, forgiving us the example and providing the safety net when we fall short. That Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ defeated sin here, and He defeated sin at the cross when He paid for it for us once and for all.
And because He died for our sins, and He rose again to prove it, if we will trust in Him for our salvation, we are forgiven and the slate is wiped clean from then on out. We trust completely in what Jesus Christ did for us to pay for our sins. And then we are given the opportunity to take up our cross and follow after him, trusting that as we live by his spirit and we follow the example that he set here, he will enable us to resist the temptation and live in ways that glorify him.
But it starts with trusting not in our own goodness and our own effort, but trusting in what he did for us.