Matthew 4:1-11 Jesus overcomes temptation, where Adam failed

theological

Apologies for the delay with this, I had login issues for the last day or so. The first in the series is here, the last thread is here.

Matthew 4:1-11 wrote:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you’,

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
and him only shall you serve.’”

11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

We see that in verse 1 there is a continuation from the last passage as we see that the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This is a necessary step before the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Jesus the one who came to save His people from their sins (1:21), and Jesus the one who offers the Holy Spirit through His baptism (3:11) is offering a new beginning. This new beginning has intentional allusions to the first beginning with Adam in Genesis.

We also see a couple of things about how the devil tempts in this passage also which is useful, and we can learn a lot from how Jesus responds to the devil.

The devil exploits weakness:
We see in verse 2 that Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and is hungry. The devil uses this fact to attempt to test Him in verse 3 when he tells Him to make bread from stones.
The devil wants us to test God:
The devil also is pretty good at twisting Scripture to this end. We see that the devil quotes from Psalm 91 to convince Jesus to jump from the highest point on the Temple (verses 5 - 6)

The devil exploits our human desire for power:
We see that the devil attempts to tempt Jesus by offering Him the entire world if He worships him. (verse 9).

Jesus uses the truth to confront the devil's lies:
To every single attempt Jesus uses the Scriptures to confront the devil. He uses Deuteronomy 8:3 to tell the devil that God's word provides what He needs (verse 4). In the second He uses God's commandment not to put Him to the test from Deuteronomy 6:16 to confront the devil (verse 7) and finally Deuteronomy 6:13 in verse 10 to say that it is God alone that we worship. It is God's word and God's Spirit that enable Jesus to succeed where Adam failed.

Thoughts for prayer:
Thank you Father for showing us that not all is lost. Jesus succeeds where Adam fails. That gives us hope that through Jesus we can overcome our sin.
Father thank you for showing us a model of how to confront the lies of the devil. Please draw us closer to your Word so that we can remember it in times of temptation.
Thank you for showing us that the devil will not ultimately succeed in this world.

Let me know your thoughts as usual. It'll be good to chat.

growleaves

I would add, Jesus rejects literalism. Which would be a minor point, except in our time now it should be considered a major point, because so many people have adopted literalistic ways of thinking, positivism etc.

And I think the way in which the scriptures are written, and the use of parables by our Lord to explain things, are of the utmost significance in the sense that 'the medium is the message'.

Even bad poetry would be of more help to us now than the utilitarian rhetoric that pervades so much public speech and renders it dry and lifeless.

antiskeptic

growleaves wrote: »

I would add, Jesus rejects literalism. Which would be a minor point, except in our time now it should be considered a major point, because so many people have adopted literalistic ways of thinking, positivism etc.

And I think the way in which the scriptures are written, and the use of parables by our Lord to explain things, are of the utmost significance in the sense that 'the medium is the message'.

Even bad poetry would be of more help to us now than the utilitarian rhetoric that pervades so much public speech and renders it dry and lifeless.

I would point out the OP doesn't necessarily reject literalism. His approach in this thread is to take Matthew in isolation, not letting other scripture inform this scripture (I think the approach is called Biblical Theology, if I remember the OP correctly).

This would mean we take it literally unless there is something in this gospel that informs otherwise. For example: Jesus saying it better to cut off our hands if they cause us to sin (which Matthew may or may not comment on - since sin must be defined therein) need be taken literally unless otherwise shown in Matthew.

antiskeptic

OP. Your approach eschews using scripture elsewhere to inform our understanding of Matthew. Why do you pray thanks that Jesus did what Adam didn't. Adam's fall isn't part of Matthew, your prayer therefore uses scripture elsewhere to inform it along with additional illumination from Matthew.

Could you spare a moment to explain what this Biblical Theology approach entails. Is it, as I understand it, reading Matthew as if it were the only scripture we had? That would seem impossible. But if allowing terms elsewhere defined by weight of scripture (such as what this word Jesus uses 'sin') then to what degree and when do we let outside scripture inform our reading of Matthew?

theological

antiskeptic wrote: »

OP. Your approach eschews using scripture elsewhere to inform our understanding of Matthew. Why do you pray thanks that Jesus did what Adam didn't. Adam's fall isn't part of Matthew, your prayer therefore uses scripture elsewhere to inform it along with additional illumination from Matthew.

Could you spare a moment to explain what this Biblical Theology approach entails. Is it, as I understand it, reading Matthew as if it were the only scripture we had? That would seem impossible. But if allowing terms elsewhere defined by weight of scripture (such as what this word Jesus uses 'sin') then to what degree and when do we let outside scripture inform our reading of Matthew?

I think primarily I want to understand Matthew in context. Note, I'm not saying we cannot use any Scripture to inform our understanding. For example, where Jesus is alluding to specific Scripture from the Old Testament I think that's helpful to bring in for additional context. The author has warranted it in that case.

I think there is a place for systematic theology but rushing to systematic theology can be unhelpful. Working to understand how a book works with context, and working to understand how passages work together can actually contribute to better systematic theology. Why?

Well, if I have considered how the verse I quote works in context then I'm going to be able to know if I am applying it to a similar context when I work on a theme. It causes me to think and say, am I using this verse correctly? In fact I'll go further. You can't do systematic theology at all, or at least not well until you've considered the Biblical theology of the verses you are using, in a local context, a book context, and a whole Bible context. You'll end up with bad theology if you've not done that leg work. Doing that leg work more and more in our devotional time with God will lead to us handling the Bible better and better. The idea that we can just hop around verses and cobble them together to make a point without doing this work seems off to me.

A recommendation is - if you don't like this method, it may be better to open a thread and discuss it instead of bringing it up continually in these threads.

For more on Biblical theology, this Wikipedia entry is a good start. It is closely related to expository preaching. I tend to use a Biblical theology approach when I've prepared to preach on the few occasions I have done in the past. Why? Because the aim is to have the passage speak to the congregation.