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Matthew 4:5-7
The devil has failed at his first attempt to gain the obedience of Jesus, so he tries once more with a different approach. As God is just, He gives the devil the opportunity to prove himself once again; this time (Matthew 4:5-7) he takes Jesus to the highest point on the temple and dares Jesus to jump off. The devil tells Jesus that the Scriptures state that if Jesus comes upon harm’s way, God will send His angels to protect Him and quotes Psalm 91:11,12. But Jesus, with His knowledge of the word of God [as He is the word made into flesh (John 1:14)] quotes Deuteronomy 6:16 as His reply to the devil as is recorded in Matthew 4:7 (NKJV), “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’”
This is an example of standing on the word of God to help us overcome temptation.
Jesus could have very easily jumped off the temple pinnacle and had the angels catch Him before He hit the ground, which would have proved the Scriptures and that He indeed was the Son of God. But in doing that He would break at least two very important commands of obedience to God: (1) As He quotes properly in His defense Deuteronomy 6:16, complying to the request of the devil would be disregarding His faith and obedience in/to God, along with His believing all of the Law in which He came to fulfill (Matthew 5:17). To keep one portion of the Law and disregard another is disobedience to God. We learn in James 2:10 (NIV), “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (2) To comply with the request of the devil would be putting God to the test. Even though we might say that complying with testing God would prove God exists and that Jesus the Son of God, it would be in disobedience to a command given by God, and thus would be sin.
The devil is the master of trickery and deceit. He is willing to use whatever means he can to trick us into his realm of deceit. We must be aware that Satan will tempt us even to take the Scriptures out of context to trick us into sinning. The devil tried to use the holy Scriptures to trick Jesus into sinning, but Jesus knew the Scriptures – all of them – and He knew that following the lead of the devil, even in proving a passage of Scripture, may indeed be disobedient to the commands that God gives us in another passage. It is therefore vitally important that we study and memorize Scripture as it is inherent – that means that it does not contradict itself and it is without error. The devil will try to make us think that we have found error in the Scriptures, but that is his trickery as he tries to make us doubt the word of God. Doubt is not believing. Not believing is having no faith in the Almighty God and our Savior Jesus Christ – whom Satan is in disobedience with and in his disobedience and fallen state, desires to make as many of us fall as he can. Put your faith in Jesus and in the Bible as the inherent word of God and experience the forgiving grace of God in your life today.
Dear LORD,
The devil is so conceited that he tried to tempt Jesus – the Son of God – God in the form of man to sin. The ways of the devil are always trying to make us fall away from You and into his trap of sin that keeps us away from experiencing the forgiveness of Christ Jesus whom You sent to save the world from sin (John 3:16-17). Please help us in our study of Your word to not take it out of context, but to study it thoroughly so that we will be equipped to stand against the wiles of the devil as the Apostle Paul teaches us in (Ephesians 6:10-20). We love You LORD and we need Your help and guidance to overcome the trickery and deceit of the devil. Please help us as we put out faith in You through our salvation in Christ Jesus that we would see the temptations of the devil and stand tall against him – in Christ. In Jesus name I pray, amen.