The temptation in the desert
That which happened to the Lord Jesus and is described in Matthew 4:1-11, for example, we usually call "the temptation in the wilderness. He had just been baptized and heaven had opened. God's Spirit descended upon Him and His Father communicated Who He was: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased“!
Immediately after this, the Lord Jesus has a direct confrontation with the devil himself. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for Him. No food for forty days and so at the very least extremely exhausted and without strength. Surrounded by wild animals (Mark 1:13), who accompanied the devil. What a terrifying scenario! You can't get more devilish than that. So powerless that angels were needed to serve Him. They would no doubt intervene if the animals wanted to harm Him!
Famine and wild beasts were a judgment from God on an apostate Jerusalem (Ezekiel 5:17; see also Leviticus 26:22). No doubt the Lord knew that and suffered the threat of it. For forty days He is tempted by the devil, and at the end come the three temptations described.
The Lord Jesus stands firm
In such a situation it is astonishing that a person can remain upright for forty days, but at the last temptations you would surely bend your knees. But the Perfect One did not! He remained completely faithful and devoted to His Father. He himself did not put an end to the temptations by sending the devil away. He only did that after Satan's last and most extreme request, not before. After forty days and nights it had been enough, wasn't it? But the Lord Jesus persisted until the devil himself descended (according to Luke 4:13).
Two things are important in the persistence, namely a) the will and b) the Word.
Wanting to do God's will
The Lord Jesus wanted to be faithful to His Father. He had come to do the will of God as He Himself had said:Behold I come to do Thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:9). He wanted to do whatever pleased His Father (Matthew 3:17). Later He tells His disciples
“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work”
“(…) for I seek not my will, but the will of my Father who sent me.”
“For I came down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of Him who sent Me“. (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38)
He knew why He had come, and He stuck to it perfectly. He wanted to do God's will!
God's Word: It Is Written
The second aspect is that the Lord Jesus only handled God's Word in relation to the devil. The devil lets Him go (or drops off himself, depending on whether you read Matthew or Luke) when he notices that only the Word of God is leading for the Lord. The devil's words, even if he quotes from God's Word, have no effect on Him. The Lord counters them with God's Word.
You could say that He'ssword of the Spirit, that is God's Word' (Ephesians 6:17). That Word of God, which he had occupied himself with from childhood, because that 'the things of His Father' were (Luke 2:47,49). He could say it
“How I love Your law! He is my meditation all day long. (…) You have taught me. How sweet are Your words to my palate, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:97,102-103).
The Lord Jesus had a perfect understanding of the Word of God and could handle it even in this situation in such a way that He took the weapons out of the hands of the devil.
He is unique!
We see here the God-sent, the only God-obedient man. The devil tries to get Him to submit to Him. But we can thank God that the Lord Jesus has stood! Had He not done so, there would have been no Calvary afterward and no atonement for sinners. Here it turned out that there was only one person on earth who did not listen to the devil, but obeyed God. He was the only One Who could bring about reconciliation between God and man!
Thank you Lord Jesus that You have come.
Thank you Lord Jesus for thinking of us,
that you have taken on blood and flesh,
brought to light in the darkness.
Therefore angels give you praise,
eternally we will thank you, Lord!
Spiritual Songs 165:1 (2016 edition)
Look at yourself
When we look at ourselves, the picture is a bit different, isn't it? We may look to the Lord Jesus, thank and honor Him and we may follow in the footsteps He has left (1 Peter 2:21). But of course we are not like the Lord Jesus.
To begin with, we are people who on the one hand do want to serve God, but on the other hand also have an old nature in them, which cannot submit to God. That is the reality as Paul draws it in the 7th chapter of the letter to the Romans. “(…) if I want to do good, evil is with me”. No believer can say that he is completely devoted to God and does His will in all things. That is the situation until this earthly body is also redeemed (Romans 6:23).
And when it comes to whether we know and can apply the Word of God ourselves, I suspect that every child of God who loves God's Word will recognize that he falls short on this point.
In short, if we look at ourselves in the light of the example that the Lord Jesus gives us here in Matthew 4, we can really only see that we need infinite preservation and grace from our God to stand.
Only when we thus recognize our own powerlessness does it make sense to think about the devil's tactics. After all, even if we know the opponent's methods, that will not help us if we are not aware of our own weakness and powerlessness.
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