Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 4:1-13, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 3
- Date: Sunday, January 26, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Knowing Your Opponent
If you’re ever in any kind of competitive situation, one of the best things you can do is acquaint yourself with what your opponent is going to do, how they’re going to act, and what kind of strategy and tactics they’re going to use. During World War II, General Patton used to read books about warfare written by General Rommel, the German general whose forces he would face 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 recognized some things about the British troops. The British would come into battle in their bright red coats, where they would be visible, stay in formation, and follow their officers. The Americans realized, “We can hide in the trees and bushes. We can hide behind things and jump out, and they’re going to stay in formation. They’re going to make it easy for us.”
In more everyday situations—and 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 coaches will sometimes watch videos of whatever team they’re going to play, learning from previous games how that team plays and reacts 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 past week. That’s one of those events where they ask questions, the students buzz in, and they try to answer. We encourage the kids to buzz as quickly as they think they might know the answer. They get some wrong and some right, but they miss one hundred percent of the questions they don’t buzz in on. So we want them to be fast and not hesitate.
But there was one team that made me wonder, “Are they even awake?” I think somebody may have buzzed in only once or twice out of the thirty-six questions they were asked in that match. 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. We are up against an opponent. We have a common opponent as believers in particular and as human beings in general. In this case, we have a common enemy. We’re going to talk today about what his strategy is for us, because it was on full display in his dealings with Jesus. We can learn not only from what the enemy did, but also from how Jesus handled it.
Satan’s Strategy Against Jesus
As we continue our study of the book of Luke, we’re going to be in chapter 4 this morning. We’re going to look at the strategy that Satan has used throughout history and perhaps learn from how Jesus handled it so that we can overcome his strategy.
Luke writes:
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty 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 are 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 are 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.
Attacking in Moments of Weakness
In this passage, and in the places in Matthew and Mark that describe the same event, we see Satan coming to Jesus at a moment of human weakness. 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. That’s a little difficult to understand because it has never happened at any other point in history. Jesus is in a category of one: fully God and fully man.
Throughout the Gospels, we see aspects of His deity and aspects of His humanity. This is one of those cases where He is out in the wilderness for forty days without eating. As a human being, He is hungry, as any of us would be. I couldn’t go forty hours. Sometimes my kids act like they can’t go forty minutes. Jesus was out there in the wilderness for forty days.
So not only was there the physical weakness of hunger, 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.” When I preached through Mark and we came to this passage, I think I brought a bunch of Snickers for everybody who was there that Sunday night. Sorry, I didn’t think that through today. But we’re just not ourselves when we’re hungry.
Add to that the likelihood that He had been by Himself for forty days. Those of us who are introverts are energized by solitude, but we still need to be around people. After a while, it begins to stress you if you’re not around anybody. That’s why solitary confinement is used as punishment. From a human standpoint, Jesus was in a weakened state, and Satan showed up at that moment ready to attack. This is what Satan does. This is where Satan will try to get us.
Do you remember what happened just before these forty days? He was baptized. At that baptism, He came out of the water, the skies opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and everybody saw the Spirit rest on Him in bodily form like a dove. Then the voice of the Father boomed out of heaven: “This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Father said that for the benefit of the crowd. It was a moment when Jesus’ ministry began and He was affirmed by the Father and by the Spirit in front of everyone. That was a spiritual mountaintop moment.
He left there, went into the wilderness, and came into this weakened state. I think that’s often where Satan attacks us: when we’ve just had a spiritual high point and then come back down into reality. 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, and we’ve worshiped together. Then, coming down from that, we go home, get everybody ready for bed, and Charla and I eat dinner. 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. “You should have said that better. You should have taken care of that. You should have done this or that.” Satan will do that to us every time. He’ll attack us when we’ve come down from the mountaintop and entered the valley.
Jesus was attacked at this point, and Satan tried everything he could think of to cause Jesus to sin. Most commentators don’t think Satan tempted Jesus with only three things. Satan probably pestered Jesus with much more than this. But these are the three temptations recorded in the Gospels because they give us an example of the kinds of attacks Jesus faced.
As we’ll discuss later, the Bible says Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Satan came at Jesus during what would have been the weakest moment of His human nature at this beginning stage of His ministry. He had just come down from the mountaintop, and Satan threw everything he had at Jesus to try to cause Him to sin.
Satan’s Limited Set of Tactics
Satan is crafty. Satan is good at his job. If his job is to get us to sin, he does a fantastic job of it. Because of that, we look at the temptations we face and Satan’s attacks and think, “There’s no way I could stand up to this.” But this passage also shows us that, as crafty as Satan is, he isn’t especially creative. He has a very limited set of tricks to use against us.
What makes me say that he has a limited set of tricks? Whenever Scripture lets us see behind the scenes and shows us Satan’s involvement in tempting someone, he does the same things every time.
Appealing to Human Desires
The first thing he’ll do is appeal to our appetites in order to sell sin. Sometimes he doesn’t have to sell very hard, because we say, “Take my money. I’m ready to buy.” Satan comes along with a temptation, and we say, “Yes, please.” It shouldn’t be that way, but he’ll come trying to appeal to our appetites.
Notice that he doesn’t try to sell us things we don’t want. Have you ever had somebody try to sell you something you didn’t want and you couldn’t get away from them fast enough? Satan doesn’t do that. He comes to us with things that make us fight not to say, “Tell me more. Let me hear more about that.”
There’s a passage that ties in with this one that we’re going to consider briefly because it shows exactly what Satan is doing here. In 1 John 2, the apostle John writes:
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. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
This is not speaking of the world in the same sense as “God so loved the world,” referring to the people in it. This is talking about the world’s system and what the world has to offer. John says not to love those things, because if we love them, the love of the Father is not in us.
There are three major things behind sin, three major things Satan uses to entice us to sin: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. These are the same three things that appear here in Luke 4 and in the other Gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptation. They show up elsewhere in Scripture as well. Satan uses these three lures to try to catch us.
The first is the lust of the flesh. I ended up teaching on this to the boys’ Bible study group a couple of weeks ago, and I was trying to think of how to explain these things without getting into conversations I wasn’t ready to have. How do I explain this to the boys? This is the way I make sense of it: the lust of the flesh involves the things we want to experience. It’s anything that makes the flesh feel good.
It can include gluttony. It can include sexual immorality. It can include the whole gamut of things that make us feel good. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience things, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel good. But what are we wanting to experience, and for what reasons?
Satan tempted Jesus with the lust of the flesh. He came to Jesus saying, in effect, “I know You’re hungry. You’ve been out here for forty days in the wilderness, and You’re hungry.” There was something His body was craving, and Satan tempted Him with food in verse 3: “Why don’t You take one of those rocks and turn it into bread? You can do that. If You’re the Son of God, why don’t You take one of those rocks and make it into bread?”
As far as I can tell, there’s nothing inherently sinful about wanting to eat. God designed us to need food. It becomes sinful when, for example, I 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 to say, “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 existence. Jesus can turn water into wine. Jesus could speak bread into existence. Why would it be sinful for Him to do this?
It was sinful because Satan was calling on Jesus to doubt the Father’s provision. The Spirit had led Him into the wilderness. He was there for a purpose the Father had sent Him and the Spirit had led Him to fulfill. Presumably, He spent some of this time in isolation and prayer with the Father, knowing that the Father would provide when the time came.
Satan very subtly tried to undermine that relationship and Jesus’ trust in the Father by saying, “If You’re really the Son of God, why don’t You make some bread out of these rocks?” The last event recorded before this—apart from the genealogy—is the Father saying, “This is My beloved Son.” Now Satan says, “If You really are, why don’t You make some bread?” This would have called Jesus to take His provision into His own hands to prove He was who the Father had already said He was.
The bread and the hunger weren’t sinful. Satan was appealing to Jesus not to demonstrate the faith in the Father that He was supposed to. To get Him to do that, Satan dangled the lust of the flesh and said, “I know You’re hungry. What would be wrong with making some bread right here?”
The Desire to Possess
Then we have the lust of the eyes. The lust of the flesh involves the things we want to experience; the lust of the eyes involves the things we want to have. Kristie was talking to the kids about envy and seeing something you just had to have. Have you ever seen something you just had to have? We probably all have.
It’s not wrong to have things. It’s not wrong to want things. Again, it depends on what we want to have, our reasons for wanting it, and how we go about obtaining it. Jesus was wandering in this desert area. The word translated “wilderness” can also mean “desert.” It’s a place where there isn’t much of anything around—rocks, sand, and brush, but not much else.
The apostle Paul tells us how Jesus stepped out of the glory of heaven. He stepped away from what He was entitled to as far as being worshiped and served by angels. That’s what Philippians 2 is about. Jesus went from that into this wilderness, and Satan tried to appeal to Him: “Don’t You want to have the glory and the kingdoms? Don’t You want to possess all these things?”
Satan said, “All these kingdoms have been given to me. They’re mine, and I can give them to whoever I want. Don’t You deserve that?” I’ve always been puzzled by this because they belong to Jesus anyway. All the kingdoms of this world belong to Jesus. He made them. One day He’s going to reassert His control and dominion over them. Satan was trying to offer something he did not own to the One who already owned it. But perhaps Satan thought that in the moment, with Jesus physically weakened, he had Him over a barrel.
Satan came to Him and said, “Don’t You want to have these?” But Jesus was already going to have them. So why was this sinful? Verse 7 tells us that Satan was calling on Jesus to worship him. When he says, “Worship before me,” he’s talking about Jesus getting down on His face before Satan and worshiping him.
“That’s all You have to do. Just do it once, and You’ll have everything You could ever want.” Satan comes to us with that deal: “Just do things my way. You can have everything you want, everything you deserve.”
The Desire to Prove Ourselves
Then there’s the pride of life. Those are the things we want to be. Jesus 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 occurs throughout the Gospels. People wanted Jesus to perform signs for their purposes, to prove Himself. There’s a temptation to say, “You don’t believe I am who I say I am? Let me prove it.” We’ve probably all felt that pride at some point. Satan essentially said, “If You really are, then prove it.”
Then he went to the Scriptures. He misused passages from Psalm 91: “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 was saying, “God’s got You. If You’re really His Son, He’ll take care of You. So while we’re up here at the pinnacle of the temple, why don’t You throw Yourself down? Of course, He’s not going to let His angels allow You to fall and hurt Yourself. 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, yes. Let me prove it.” 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’ll come in at least one of those ways, perhaps with a combination of them. Every temptation he throws at you uses one or more of those three things.
We would do well to recognize what he’s doing and what he’s going to use against us. Then, when the bait is dangling there and looks so good, we can recognize, “Wait a minute. That’s a trick. God’s Word told me he was going to do that.”
Twisting God’s Word
Satan’s other tactic is twisting God’s Word to justify sin. He won’t only appeal to your appetites to sell sin. He’ll twist God’s Word to make you think it’s acceptable.
In verses 10 and 11, Satan told Jesus to throw Himself down because God’s Word said He would be protected. But Satan misquoted, misinterpreted, and misapplied the passage. When you go back to that Old Testament passage, it’s talking about God’s care for His people. It’s similar to the image of holding up a toddler who is learning to walk so that the child doesn’t fall, get hurt, or trip over a rock.
Satan twisted that Scripture to make it sound as though it was perfectly acceptable to throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple because God and His angels would lift you up. He tried to convince Jesus that the passage means we can act recklessly and God will take care of the consequences. But that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about taking steps of obedience and trusting that God will care for you as you’re learning to walk with Him. Satan took it out of context and misused it, and that’s what he’ll always do.
You can see that all over social media today. People post videos on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook saying, “This is okay, and here’s this verse to prove it.” They take one part of one verse out of context. That’s why we should never base anything on an isolated 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?
God’s Word, properly interpreted, will never teach us to sin. But Satan will twist God’s Word. When one little snippet of God’s Word is taken as a pretext for why this or that is acceptable, or why you can do it just once or just a little bit, we need to understand that this is Satan’s tactic to twist God’s Word to justify our sin.
The Same Strategy in the Garden
Satan has always relied on these two tactics. If we go back to the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted humanity with the same tactics. He appealed to our appetites. Genesis 3:6 says the woman saw that the tree was good for food. That’s appealing to the lust of the flesh. 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.” The tree was desirable to make one wise. That’s the pride of life.
In that same instance in the garden, God had told Adam, “Do not eat the fruit of that tree, or you’ll die.” It was one tree: “Do not eat the fruit of that tree.” Satan came and asked, “Is it true that God said you shouldn’t touch any of the trees in the garden, or you’ll die?” He began to twist God’s Word and make God say something He had not said until humanity became so twisted and confused that they gave in to their sinful desires and walked away from God’s plan.
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 tactics. They are consistent throughout Scripture: appealing to those three appetites and twisting Scripture to convince us that sin is acceptable.
When we begin to recognize these tactics, and as we walk with the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit, it becomes easier to identify what Satan is doing: “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 acceptable, and it’s not going to work.” Recognizing his strategy makes it easier to resist temptation when it comes.
Jesus Overcame Where We Fail
The example is given to us by Jesus because Jesus prevailed where everyone else falls short. Jesus overcame all of these temptations. One of the ways He did it was by standing on the authority of God’s Word.
If you’re reading the same translation I am, you’ll see the words of Jesus in red letters throughout this story, and many of them are in all capital letters because they quote the Old Testament. Some translations may show that differently. In verse 4, Jesus responds to the temptation to turn the stone into bread by saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.'” That’s Deuteronomy 8:3.
When Satan says, “Worship me, and all of this will become Yours,” Jesus answers in verse 8, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'” That’s Deuteronomy 6:13. When Satan tells Him to throw Himself down and even twists Scripture to try to convince Him, Jesus says in verse 12, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” That’s Deuteronomy 6:16.
What is Jesus doing? He’s quoting Scripture, and He’s quoting it in context. Jesus is able to do that because He is God and is perfectly familiar with Scripture. But it’s also a lesson for us that we need to follow His example and become familiar with what God’s Word says.
Our Sinless High Priest
But more importantly—and I don’t mean to make it sound as though knowing God’s Word isn’t important; it is hugely important—we need to understand what this story is ultimately about. 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 temptations come. But as important as that is, this story is not ultimately about Satan. This story is about Jesus and how Jesus overcame.
This time of temptation and testing was part of the Father’s plan for Him and for us because this test prepared 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 weaknesses.” Our High Priest, the One who stands between us and the Father, understands your weaknesses.
He understands the temptations you face. He understands the attacks Satan has made against you, is making against you now, or will make against you until the day you die. He understands all of it because He went through it too. The passage continues by describing One “who has been tempted in all things as we are.” He experienced the same kinds of temptations.
But the great difference between Him and us is found in the final words of Hebrews 4:15: “yet without sin.” He experienced every kind of temptation you and I experience, but He never once sinned. That means we have a High Priest, Jesus Christ, who understands our weaknesses and the attacks we’re under because He’s been through them as well. But we also have a High Priest who defeated those temptations and was victorious over sin.
Because of this, He calls us to resist temptation and trust in Him as our sinless Savior. As believers, we need to do both. We need to resist temptation. We don’t get to say, “Because Jesus paid for it, it’s all forgiven anyway, so I can do whatever I want.” If that’s our position, it tells us something is wrong in the heart, and there’s a good chance we may not be born again. At the very least, we need to spend time dealing with the Lord about that.
As believers indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we should be driven to resist temptation and sin. But Jesus is not putting the whole burden on us and saying, “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.
That’s why it matters so much that He has not only given us the example of how to resist temptation, but has actually defeated temptation on our behalf. When we fall short, we have the grace of that High Priest who offered Himself for us, who was not only the High Priest but also the sacrifice, so that our sins could be paid for.
When we are too weak to stand against temptation, when we fall short, and when we let our Father down, we are able to rest in His grace and in the forgiveness He purchased for us. The hero of the story is not us learning how to overcome temptation merely by following Jesus’ example. The hero of the story is Jesus, giving us the example and providing the safety net when we fall short. Jesus Christ defeated temptation here, and He defeated sin at the cross when He paid for it for us once and for all.
Trusting in Christ’s Victory
Because He died for our sins and rose again to prove it, if we trust in Him for salvation, we are forgiven and the slate is wiped clean. We trust completely in what Jesus Christ did to pay for our sins. Then we are given the opportunity to take up our cross and follow Him, trusting that as we live by His Spirit and follow the example He set here, He will enable us to resist temptation and live in ways that glorify Him.
But it begins with trusting not in our own goodness or effort, but in what He did for us.
