Who's In Control?

August 06, 2017
Pastor Clint Ziemer

Audio of the sermon preached on August 6, 2017, at Cable Community Church, Sherrard, IL

Episode Notes

Who's In Control?

Matthew 4:1-11


Do you ever have trouble with temptation?  


A little boy was once forbidden by his mother to go swimming, but she permitted him to go out for a walk. When he came back, it was quite evident that he had disobeyed her and had gone in the water. When asked why, the little fellow answered,


"Well, Mother, I happened to have my swimming trunks with me, so I decided to go in."


Oscar Wilde said, "The only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it."  That's the motto for many people, isn't it?


There are 2 words in the Greek that the Bible uses for “temptation”.


1.- PEIRAZO – this is a testing for the purpose of seeing what is good OR evil in something … to find the defects in something. When people have a BIOPSY done on certain tumors, they are conducting a TEST (“peirazo”) for the purpose of finding out if there is good or evil in it.


This is the term that is used when Satan TEMPTS you to sin. He is looking for the DEFECTS in you … to tempt you to sin. This is a NEGATIVE process. The PURPOSE is to get you to sin.


2.- DOKIMAZO – this is a testing for the purpose of APPROVING something. The expectation is always for GOOD results. When you take a test at school, the teacher doesn’t give it to you for you to FAIL … but to PASS. When you test the spaghetti sauce while you’re cooking it, it’s to see how GOOD it is … NOT how BAD it is.


This is the kind of TESTING that God gives you. 1 Peter 1:7 – “that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” This is a POSITIVE process. The PURPOSE is to make you stronger in your faith.


NOW – The TESTING that God gives you, comes from WITHOUT. The TESTING (“temptations”) that Satan gives you, comes from WITHIN. HOWEVER … the TESTING of God (through the influence of Satan) can be turned into TEMPTATIONS.


• ILLUSTRATION: The teacher gives you a TEST at school … but you are TEMPTED to cheat.

• EXAMPLE: God sent the Children of Israel into the wilderness, and TESTED them with no water. The PURPOSE was to get them to turn to Him and trust Him as their supplier. INSTEAD … they turned it into a TEMPTATION, and murmured and complained against God.


Since, according to Heb. 4:15, [Jesus] “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin,” let us take a look at the temptation of Jesus, to give us an idea of how Satan works in tempting us and how we might pass through the testing times without failing.  We will see in Matthew 4:1-11 that Satan tempts us in the areas of  ...


Our Possessions  (vv. 3-4)

Our Proclamations  (vv. 5-7)   and

Our Profession  (vv. 8-10)

Read Matthew 4:1-11



Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. 3 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”

5 Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, 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 shall give His angels charge over you,’

and,

‘In their hands they shall bear you up,

Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”

7 Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

8 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

11 Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.


  1. Body
    1. Possessions   (vv. 3-4)
        1. Those things you have or want 
      1. What do YOU need?
        1. Consider for a moment what are your needs?
        2. For Jesus, after fasting for 40 days, He was hungry
        3. Beyond that, as the creator of all things, He was able
          1. Author N.T. Wright tells of staying with an associate and his family in Canada.  The parents were having trouble getting a daughter to clean her room.  This was at the hight of the fad of W.W.J.D. bracelets and t-shirts.  The daughter was wearing one such bracelet.  Her parents asked her (concerning the unkempt room) What Would Jesus Do?  Oh, she replied, Jesus would just wave his finger and the room would clean itself.
          2. This represents a misunderstanding of Jesus.  Just because He could do such a thing does not mean that he would do it.  
        4. When it comes to fulfilling needs, we are often driven by our fleshly desires.  Jesus was always driven by the Spirit.
        5. Let me contrast Jesus with an example of one driven by the flesh.  In C. S. Lewis’ classic The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, Edmund makes his way through the wardrobe and into Narnia where he meets the White Witch. Unaware of the evil of the White Witch, Edmund climbs up into her sleigh. The Witch asks Edmund what he would like and his request is for some Turkish delight, a sweet blend of sugar and starch, covered in powdered sugar. Later Edmund would forsake his friends and seek out the Witch for more of the Turkish delight. The White Witch did not force Edmund to eat the Turkish delight or to leave his friends. Edmund did so out of his own desires within him.
      2. What do you NEED?
        1. Jesus’ example in temptation and His later teaching show us that the flesh shouldn't rule over the spirit
        2. One's entire being:  body, soul and spirit should submit to God
    2. Proclamations   (vv. 5-7)
        1. What you say or do
      1. What do you believe?
        1. The Word says it - Do You believe it?
        2. When can you trust God?  Always or only at the temple?
      2. Who do you believe?
        1. God may test our faith
        2. We don't test God
      3. Illustration
        1. At the core, this is about trying to manipulate God to do what we want. It could be something simple like praying for a lottery jackpot, or it can be much more subtle, like the temptation presented to Jesus. Why not do something dramatic, to express your faith and call down a wonderful demonstration of God’s power? Adam and Eve felt that God could not possibly withhold from them something so obviously good, and so tried to pressurize God into agreeing with them, by taking the fruit.
        2. So often things that we do in the Church, with the best of intentions, can fall into this trap of trying to box God into a corner so that he has to act. We can easily set up situations where we force God to act; manipulating events so that we hope only one course of action can result. But can we really present God with a fait accompli? All of this begs the question of why we do the things that we do. Is our prayer motivated by self-centered fear, or God-centered trust?  Is our desire supremely for God’s glory, or for our own?
    3. Profession  (vv. 8-10)
        1. What you are or become
      1. Who are you?
        1. Why take the hard road of suffering and sacrifice
        2. Don't you deserve to be worshiped?
      2. Illustration
        1. Satan is offering Jesus a fatal compromise. A shortcut.
          1. Jesus must know that the kingdoms of this world will, in time, be His.
          2. But, He also knows it will be after He endures the cross, not before.
          3. Now Satan offers Him an apparently easy way to get what He is destined to get anyway.
          4. Satan doesn’t ask for lifelong fidelity. Just a moment of compromise
        2. It must have looked attractive, as temptations always do:
          1. When Satan tempts us, he makes it look attractive. He doesn’t send an ugly woman with a sign saying "This way to hell."
          2. No warnings appear on liquor bottles, "drink me and become an alcoholic."
          3. He says, "skip worship and go to the lake, go deer hunting, or just lie in bed.", Not "skip worship and smash your toes with a hammer." He makes sin look enjoyable.
          4. He was trying to make his plan look easier and more pleasant to Jesus than God’s plan. That’s how testing becomes temptation.
        3. The goal was good: God intends to give all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus. I Cor. 15:25.
          1. Have you ever been tempted to do a bad thing for a good reason? Like tell a little lie or compromise your convictions to avoid hurting someone’s feelings?
          2. In God’s scheme of things, the end does not justify the means.
          3. I read about  a church that didn’t get a water bill for years. They found a broken meter and didn’t report it because they thought the Church couldn’t afford to pay the bills. Eventually they got caught and it cost them thousands.
      3. Who do you serve?
        1. God, your Father, knows best
        2. Him, alone, shall you serve
  2. Conclusion 
    1. It's interesting to me that all of these things Satan offered Jesus came to Him as He waited on the proper timing of His Father in Heaven.
      1. The last line of today's text says that angels attended to Him
      2. It it likely that these angels also ministered to his need for food -- See, for example,  Elijah's time of fasting 
      3. He receives all worship, in due time.
    2. Many times this temptation story of Jesus seems far removed from our world, our life. On the surface we have a difficult time relating to these temptations, turning stones into bread, or jumping off the highest part of the temple and having God’s angels catch you, or being placed on a very high mountain so that you could see the whole world, then having the Devil giving you a chance of owning it all. That is far removed from the sins we face day in and day out.  Yet how many times in a day, or even an hour, are you tempted to take a short cut where God would want you to go the distance?
    3. One key lesson in all of these is to wait upon God and His timing.  This is a lesson of control.  Who controls your life, you or God?
    4. The temptations of Jesus are not so far removed from our lives, if we think of them as leaving God out of the picture of life and you controlling your life. Control, power, accountability, those are the sins of our lives. We like to pretend, to play games with each other and with God that we are not as bad, or as unrighteous, or as unholy as someone else we can point a finger at, as we sit in the smugness of our own sin and pride. Living life my way is the way of life for many people. One of the fast food chains had a slogan a few years back, saying,"Have it your way!!" or maybe some will remember Frank Sinatra’s hit song, "I did it my way!!" Isn’t there a lot of theological truth in those two lines.?? You and I like to have things our own way. We want to take God out of the picture of our lives. We want to control and run our lives our way. But many times, no, all of the times when we try that, we do not live up to our potential, our goals, our vision of what we want for ourselves, so then we become angry, we lash out, maybe at God, maybe at a loved one, maybe at ourselves. We want control, but when we think we have it, we are in all reality out of control, because we are like Paul as he say: "That is, I don’t accomplish the good things that I set out to do, and the evil things that I don’t want to do, I find I’m always doing."
    5. The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is the story of our spiritual growth. Those things were what Jesus needed to prove before He was sent out into ministry, and so it is with us. If we want to be disciples, our first task is to learn these lessons of temptation. To sort out those things we have and want:  to learn first that God alone can nourish us; to learn second what and Who we believe; and to learn lastly who and Who's we are.  Then the angels can come and strengthen us.

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