Speaking Truth

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

SPEAKING TRUTH

Matt 4:5-7

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: "'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" 7 Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 

NIV

Yes, the tempter knows the scripture, but he twists it, takes it out of context, manipulates it for his own purpose to test Jesus. It is difficult, in some sense, to understand how Jesus would allow this to even happen as he was the one who cast this devil, lucifer from heaven in the first place. We also think it was God who cast Lucifer to the earth, but Jesus is God, nothing was made that He did not make. Jesus was there in the beginning and so these two have a lot of history together, they are not strangers. Still, Jesus allows this to happen, so that we can gain insight into how the schemes of the devil will play out in our lives. We know Jesus is not going to yield to any of the temptations and we would think the devil knows that too, but still, he attempts to trip Jesus up in his scheme. We think that is a problem in our lives in that it seems for the most part that we always blame the devil for all the temptations we face. We think that first, we have to understand that the devil is not omnipresent and cannot be tempting all of us all the time. Yes, there are other evil spirits, angels that were cast down with Lucifer and may do his bidding or may not. First, we do not know how many angels were cast out with him, and second, we do not know for sure that he is in absolute control of all of them. From the experiences Jesus had with these evil spirits, these demons, they knew him, again because He was there when they were cast out of heaven. Nevertheless, because we cannot be sure if there are enough demons for each person that is alive, and of course the population of the earth has increased dramatically since the time they were cast down to earth and it continues to increase and their numbers do not. So the point of all this is that as Paul said, when we want to do good, evil is right there with us, and that is not in the sense beside us, but within us. The Apostle James makes it very clear that it does not take God, the devil, or a demon, to tempt us for we are drawn, dragged away by our own evil desires and when that temptation is conceived it becomes sin. The temptation is not sin, but it is what we do with it that counts. But, at the same time, we have to understand that we are capable all on our own to do evil, to sin, without any help whatsoever from an outside tempter. We are in error if we think we are a good person, for no one is good except God himself. Those are the very words of Jesus that both Matthew and Luke record when a young ruler came to Jesus and asked him what must he do to inherit eternal life. He started out by calling Jesus a good teacher and that is when Jesus made that comment about no one is good except God. Therefore, there can be no such person who can claim to be a good Christian, for that implies we are inherently good, when we are just the opposite, inherently bad, with evil residing within. We are all capable of evil all by ourselves. Here the devil tempts Jesus to prove that God will watch over him and keep him from harm, and we might think that sounds right, in some sense. But do we put God to a foolish test by some of the dumb things we do in life? Do we take chances that we shouldn’t? Do we put ourselves in situations that could raise up that evil within us so we yield to that temptation? We need to understand what we are capable of and resist even putting ourselves in those situations that could cause evil to have its way. The best way includes allowing God to clothe us in His armor, plus hide His word in our heart and mind so, like Jesus, we can discern the truth and quote ourselves those verses that speak to our temptation.