Jesus was Tempted in the Wilderness

Before Jesus really started His ministry, the Bible tells us that He went out into the wilderness for forty days, and at the end of those days, He was tempted by Satan. Now he had been fasting all that time in the wilderness, so, physically, He was probably weaker than at any other time in His life (by the way, I don't recommend fasting for forty days. Surviving such a fast is a miracle in and of itself). Spiritually, though, He was very strong, because of the fast. The devil tempted Him with food first. Well, really not so much food, but the idea that, You don't need to fast, You're hungry, You could use your divine power to turn these stones into bread... Satan would have been happy just to get Jesus to do anything selfish. Obviously, in the flesh, Jesus would have liked to have had something to eat. It wouldn't make sense to tempt Him with something He didn't want...
Satan also tempted Him with Scripture, he took Him to the pinnacle of the temple, and tried to talk Jesus into throwing Himself down. Scripture says that His angels will protect you. Jesus' response was that one should not tempt God. I've noticed some people seem to think that Jesus was telling Satan to leave Him alone. Jesus always had the power to tell Satan to bug off, but if that had been the intent of His statement, the conversation would have been over. All Jesus was saying was that He wasn't going to do something stupid, just for the sake of proving that God would protect Him. God has promised to protect us from all kinds of outside forces. This doesn’t mean that once one becomes a Christian, then they will never suffer a physical injury. Flesh is just temporal; it is your immortal soul that God will not allow to come to harm, as long as you remain committed to God. To intentionally place yourself in mortal danger to try to prove God (unless you have been specifically led by God), is tempting God to just write you off as an idiot ("I thought that one would do great things, but apparently they're just stupid. No great loss." Okay, granted, I don't really think God takes that simplistic of an approach to things, but sometimes He must be, well, tempted to...).
Finally Satan took Jesus to a high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and said that he would give Him all of it, if Jesus would just bow down to Satan. There are several points of interest here. First off, some have made the criticism that there is no mountain anywhere on earth high enough that one can see the whole world. That is absolutely true; it is humanly impossible for a person to stand on a mountain and see the whole world. Of course, we are not talking about ordinary human beings, here, are we? Let's face it, Satan could have taken Him to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and showed Him the whole world. Neither one of them would have had a problem with that. Second, Satan didn't really have possession of the world, and Jesus knew that, and Satan knew that He knew, so why would he try to tempt Jesus with something that they both knew he couldn't deliver? I think he must have been offering something that he could deliver, and that he knew Jesus would want. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world..." That's not talking about this ball of rock that we live on. God could destroy it in an instant, and make another one just like it, and it wouldn't even hurt His feelings. The world that John is referring to is the people in the world; most of which, Satan had absolute power over. It seems to me that Satan is offering to stop trying to be god to these people, if Jesus will only allow Satan to be His god. Basically, he was offering to take away our options, so that we would have no choice to serve God (but, since God would then be serving Satan, we would, ultimately be under his control, anyway). Jesus also didn't want us to serve God only by default; He wants us to have choices. Jesus, of course, knew better than negotiate with a terrorist, even one holding millions of hostages. Thirdly, this is the point where Jesus finally told Satan that He was through talking to him (or he was through talking to Him--either way). This is what so many people think that He was saying after the second temptation.
In summary, a temptation will always be something you want. Granted, sometimes the devil will try to convince you that you want something that you don't really want, but desire is always going to be part of the temptation equation. It might be food, it might be to seek reassurance that God loves you (if that's the case, just consider what He did for you, take John 3:16 personally, that promise is to each of us, individually--repeat after me, "For God so loved me, that He gave His only begotten Son, that I could believe in Him, and I should not perish, but have everlasting life."), or it might even be something that seems like an awesome opportunity to win souls to Christ (of course, if that's being offered by Satan, figure the odds of it affecting anyone's salvation other than your own). Whatever it is, though, what you gain from it will never be worth what you gave up to get it. What shall if profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36) Satan plays for keeps.

Creation

I heard a comment the other day that the creation account in Genesis is ‘ridiculous’ because the herbs and grasses and trees were created the day before the sun was. This is true, plants were created on day three, and the sun and moon on day four. That’s an interesting point, and, to be honest, that slipped by me before. On the face of it, that does seem some kind of odd, to say the least. My first instinct was to reply that plants don’t need light every day, just because they were created 24 hours before the sun, doesn’t really mean that there was a problem. That didn’t seem right to me; there had to be a better answer, and not just because I don’t believe that the days in Genesis were necessarily the 24-hour days that we have now. Of course, any of us that have read about people growing illicit marijuana plants indoors under artificial light, realize that you don’t need sunlight for plants to grow, you just need light. God created light on day one…
Another comment about Creation was made that in Genesis chapter 1 it says that on the sixth day God created man, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. This would have been two days after God created plants, as mentioned above. But, in chapter two, it says that God created Adam first, and then created ‘the garden’, and created Eve later. Why does Genesis 1 say that God created man and woman at the same time, two days after creating plants, and then Genesis 2 says that God created man first, then plants, and then the woman? Let me point out first that Genesis 1 doesn’t say that God created man and woman at the same time, only on the same day. Granted, it’s declared in one verse in the first chapter, but spread out over several verses in chapter two, which can create the impression that little or no time has passed between the creation of man and woman in the first chapter, while also creating the impression that a great deal of time has passed between the two in the second chapter. Notice that there is no mention of nightfall between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve (although Adam did sleep—prophecy of general anesthesia?). As far as the creation of plants, chapter 1 says He created the plants, chapter 2 says He planted a garden; that’s not the same thing (ask anyone who’s ever planted a garden). So, chapter 1 gives us a general overview of Creation, but then chapter 2 gives us details about the creation of man.
Side note: I mentioned general anesthesia earlier; of course, God didn’t have to use general anesthesia to remove Adam’s rib, He could have used local anesthesia and kept it extremely local. When I heard about this as a kid, it made sense to me, because I didn’t know about local anesthesia. As an adult, I realize that part of the reason that the surgeons who prefer general is that it keeps the patient from moving around. That wouldn’t be a problem for God, either. So why did God put Adam to sleep? I don’t know, but I’m sure it seemed like the best idea at the time. If I had to guess, my best guess that God knew Adam well enough to know that Adam would have serious issues at watching his side open up, and a part of himself come out, and then watching the wound miraculously heal. It might have given him nightmares for life.
Another criticism: After Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, and then heard God’s voice, they hid themselves. God called out, “Where art thou?” What kind of omnipotent God loses track of His creation? How could He not know where Adam and Eve were? Generally, I don’t hear that criticism from parents, because we, as parents, understand that. When we know our children are doing something they shouldn’t, we will frequently ask questions that we know the answers to, to try to encourage them to confess. Just because He asked the question, it doesn’t necessarily follow that He didn’t know the answer. I’ve heard that in law school, they teach prospective lawyers that they should never ask a question unless they already know the answer. God never does, either.

Temptations

In Matthew chapter 4 (and Mark 1, starting at verse 13), we are told that Jesus was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. To summarize, Jesus fasted for forty days and nights, and Satan suggested that Jesus turn stones into bread. Jesus responded with Scripture, “Thou shalt not live by bread alone.” So Satan hit Jesus with Scripture, telling Him to prove Himself by throwing Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, quoting Psalms 91, “He shall give His angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” But Jesus responded, quoting Deuteronomy again, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Satan then offered Jesus the whole world, if Jesus would bow down and worship Satan. Jesus’ response to that was to tell Satan to leave, quoting, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” (Maybe I’m missing something here, but it appears that Jesus is actually quoting Exodus 34:14 and Deuteronomy 8:19 together)
There are a few points that I want to make with this. First, some people have criticized because the quotes in the gospels don’t match up exactly with the Scriptures in the Old Testament. Actually, they are pretty close. Keep in mind, though, that the Old Testament was written in Ancient Hebrew, but the New Testament was written in Greek. So the same phrase, translated from Hebrew to English, is going to be permutated slightly when translated from Hebrew to Greek to English. The actual phrase didn’t change; the wording is just slightly different. Think about it, when you read Psalms 91:11-12, don’t you get the same sense that you do when you read Matthew 4:6? Don’t they say the same thing, even if they aren’t worded quite the same? One could make an argument that, since both were translated into English at the same time, the translators could have compared notes, to make sure that they did match. Certainly they could have, but that would have required collusion. Technically, that might not have been considered collusion, because there would not have been an attempt to defraud, but the translators clearly wanted to avoid even the appearance of collusion to defraud.
It seems to me that some people misinterpret what Jesus was saying when He said, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Some people seem to think that Jesus was ordering Satan to leave Him alone. After all, Jesus was God manifest in the flesh; Satan was tempting Him, and Jesus was saying, don’t do that. I have to believe, though, that if Jesus had ordered Satan to leave, the conversation would have ended right there, but it didn’t. So what was Jesus saying? He was saying that He wasn’t going to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the temple, because that would be tempting God. In other words, Satan was trying to get Jesus’ flesh (which was, after all, fully human) to tempt God. There will be times when God will put us in potentially dangerous situations if for no other reason than to try our faith, but that doesn’t mean that we should just cavalierly place ourselves in harm’s way, based on the promise that He will protect us.
My final point, and this is the point that is usually made from this account, is that Satan tried to use Scripture against Jesus. It didn’t work, of course, because Jesus knew exactly what each verse in the Bible meant. There are some things in there that we have not been given full understanding of, yet. There are some people out there that will try to use Scripture to convince us of things that just aren’t Bible. As contradictory as that may sound, it is absolutely true. I would also like to make the point, though, that Satan offered three different temptations, and he only used Scripture for one of them. Most of the time, the nonsense that we get hit with isn’t even Scripture. Don’t misunderstand me, there are a lot of things that aren’t Scripture that aren’t wrong. We know a lot about hygiene, for example, that the people living in Biblical times didn’t know. You won’t find any mention of germs, bacteria, or viruses in Scripture. Of course, now that we know those things, we recognize that a lot of the things that God told Ancient Israel to do were not just religious rites, they were good hygienic practices. So, sometimes things outside the Bible help us to understand the Bible better. But, sometimes, things outside of Scripture, or even things in Scripture, but taken out of context, can make what is Scripture seem to be, well, questionable. In cases like that, the Word of God takes precedence—always and forever.