The Temptations of Christ - Part 5 (final)
The three attempts by Satan to tempt the Lord Jesus Christ are covered in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13. In the first two temptations, we have seen Jesus Christ remain totally subservient to the Father’s will and plan, and we have seen Him use the power of Scripture as His response to Satan. We learned that the Word of God must be the priority in our lives above all else and that we must be very careful not to distort the Word or twist it to say what we want it to say.
Now Satan comes at the Lord with a third temptation, a last attempt to get Him to fail. He takes Jesus to a very high mountain (the exact location is unknown), a place where Jesus can view all the kingdoms of the world at that time, in all their glory (most likely the Roman Empire, Greece with all its culture, Asia Minor [now Turkey], Egypt, and Arabia). At that moment, our Lord saw all the magnificence of the ruler of this world. And Satan said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). Satan offered it all to Jesus if He would just for one moment worship him. If Jesus would acknowledge him as “the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14), then Satan would bring God down to his own level.
Satan knows Jesus came into this world for one purpose—to go to the cross and pay the penalty for the sins of the entire human race. He knows the cross must come before the crown, before Christ can establish the promised Jewish kingdom. Satan is offering a way to avoid the cross, which our Lord certainly did not want to undertake (Matthew 26:39, 42). His spiritual death on the cross would be the most horrible experience of His life. And here Satan is offering Him an out. He is proposing that Jesus have the kingdom without the cross.
If He had worshiped Satan, our Lord would have been under Satan’s authority. Instead, our Lord again answers with the authority of Scripture (Deuteronomy 6:13) when He says, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve’” (Matthew 4:10).
We worship God, and that worship means obedience and service to Him through learning and applying God’s Word to our lives. We are always either serving God or Satan. There is no in-between. We either think with the mind of Christ and divine viewpoint, or we think with human viewpoint. True worship is in the soul, and it is thinking with the Word of God and obeying His mandates. The only way for us to thwart the attacks of Satan’s cosmic system is to use the power of the Holy Spirit and to study God’s Word so we can know what His will is for our lives and can fulfill His plan.