Friday – January 22, 2016
Here comes the Friday God’s Word which is our continuing study of Spiritual Warfare. We are also to remind one another to pray for the Church of Jesus Christ, for repentance and a change of thinking, speaking and doing in the organized Church. Also the sheep whom the shepherds have scattered need sources of growth and leadership in the Holy Spirit. The Church building pictured is the First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The congregation for this Church was first organized in 1682 in Kittery, Maine which then moved to Charleston in 1696, perhaps it was something about the weather. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Now let us return to the good fight of faith.
1 Timothy 6:12 (KJV)
12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
Yesterday when I ended we had just finished one Biblical method of fighting this good fight of faith which is to not enter into the temptation in the first place. This requires that one remain alert to the certainty of temptation. Talk to the Father about everything going on in our lives listening intently to the Word of God, following the leadership of the Spirit and having nothing to do with the lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, or the pride of life (this temporal life). The second way to resist temptation is with Scripture (Word of God) which is really the crux of all of our existence. We see this method in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. I will go down through this passage interjecting my thoughts, hopefully the thoughts of the Father, between verses.
Luke 4:1-13 (KJV)
1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
The first thing you may have noticed is that God Himself by the agency of the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness for the express purpose of being tempted. God will not tempt us with evil but the Devil sure will. God will allow our testing and He will test or tempt us to do right or good. For example the person in the checkout line is $10.00 short and the Holy Spirit nudges us to pay the difference for her. Satan will never ask us to do well or do the will of God. Without putting on a display give the person the $10.00 blessing them in the name of the Lord. We are to enforce the defeat of the enemy, the enemy wants to trip us up and cause us to sin and be separated from the Father and become dull of hearing. The Father wants us to have victory, to triumph, be more than a conqueror for the glory of God. In that victory the devil will be exposed and embarrassed (if that is possible) and good will flow into other people’s lives and we will advance in the Kingdom of God. Think of it as reversing the curse and substituting the Blessing. That is what Jesus did, and that is what we are to do.
2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.
4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
11 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Three times the devil tries to get Jesus over into the flesh. This has worked with mankind since Eden till now. Thank God, Jesus refuses to get into the flesh realm but stays in the spirit realm. The devil wants Him to make physical bread but Jesus retorts with the superior need for spiritual bread which is the Word of God. The devil tempts Jesus concerning the systems of the world which he will surrender if Jesus will but submit to him. The devil got his power (authority not wonder working power) from Adam when they bowed their knee to the Serpent. Again Jesus responds with the Word of God and the Truth that men (and angels) are to worship or submit only to God, not to the devil or the worlds allure. The devil then challenges the authenticity or the faith of Jesus in the Word of God by tempting Him with a physical act that was not led of the Spirit which would require a physical manifestation of a spiritual intervention by God. Jesus retorts that this would be tempting God or challenging God in an unnecessary way and that would be sin and Scripture (Deuteronomy six) forbids this.
13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
The devil will depart from us for a period of time as well but that does not mean that we can let down our guard at any time. I will pick up here next week with a little further discussion of resisting temptation with the Word of God from 1 Kings Thirteen. Then we will move into the third leg of our tools which is casting down imaginations and words that exalt themselves above God.
By Pastor David R. Wood
