Matthew 4:1-11 tells us that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
If you want to develop a winning strategy to beat Satan in the battles he wants to wage in your life, you must be led by the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit leads you to a situation, no matter who or what awaits you when you get there, it will become a place of victory. The Holy Spirit will not only lead you into the battle, but the Holy Spirit will lead you into the victory. Let me say it this way: You will never lose the battle when the Holy Spirit leads your life.
Maybe the battle you are facing is the result of the fact that you hadn’t been letting the Holy Spirit lead you, and you have led yourself into the middle of a battle that God never intended for you to fight. Take heart, friends. Even if the battle you are fighting isn’t one God led you to, it is one He can bring you through. I Corinthians 10:13 calls it the “way of escape.” God will provide the way of escape, but no escape will come without a battle.
Are you letting the Holy Spirit lead your life right now?
In this wilderness battle, Jesus was physically and emotionally weak. Wouldn’t you say we often rely on our physical well-being to dictate what we can and cannot do? When an ache or pain or sickness begins to dominate our lives, when it begins to have the upper hand, it is easy to let it rule in a situation and sideline us. When we are emotionally weak, when our thought life is distracted or our hearts are broken, when we have poured ourselves out because of situations that demanded us to be super present, when obligations have kept us on the go, and we are depleted, it is easy to conclude that we have “nothing left to give.” That we aren’t up to a battle or challenge. So, often when we are physically and emotionally weak, we retreat. We surrender.
What Jesus is teaching us, at the onset of His ministry, is that we can be spiritually strong even when we are physically and emotionally weak. Listen, whether you are up to the task or not, Christ in you, will win against Satan every time. You don’t have to be on top the world, having everything going your way, and firing on all cylinders to take authority over the devil. You just have to let Christ be Christ in you. Jesus is always at His best, so whether you feel tired and drained or beaten down by life’s circumstances, you can wage war against Satan and win. Why? Because the battle is won and fought on a spiritual plane; not an emotional or physical one.
So, point one in our training for battle against Satan is that we need to be led by the Holy Spirit. Pray to be led by the Holy Spirit. I would suggest secondly that we need to become savvy to the devil’s schemes. The Apostle Paul said in II Corinthians 2:11 that he had learned some things about warfare, about standing against the devil, and he determined he wasn’t going to be outsmarted by Satan. He said he was not going to live unaware or unwise to Satan’s schemes.
One of Satan’s schemes is to get us focused on the physical. Our desires. Our needs. Our wants. Our flesh. Of course, Jesus was hungry, but He didn’t fall for the scheme that involved getting Him focused on His flesh. Satan wants you focused on your flesh. That is one of his schemes. What do I mean by “the flesh?” They are the tendencies, the propensities, the inclinations, that are driven by our sinful nature. Paul unpacks the deeds of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21-19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
Paul says here in Galatians 5 that the acts of the flesh are obvious. Take note of what Paul says in Galatians 5:16-18 16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Paul is emphasizing what I have already said. If you want to stay ahead of the devil and to be able to defeat him at his schemes, you have to be led by the Holy Spirit. Walk by the Spirit. Get radically focused on the Holy Spirit.
Paul goes on to help us understand what the problem is with the flesh: 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. Do you see the problem? The flesh takes you in the opposite direction of where the Spirit wants you to go. The Spirit and the flesh are contrary to each other. They are in conflict. They have opposite outcomes for us.
You don’t have to obey your flesh. When your flesh starts talking, you don’t have to listen. You can count your flesh as crucified with Christ. Your flesh is those desires that exceed God’s desires for you. Of course, we need to eat when we are hungry, but eating to excess is a problem. Eating to soothe ourselves and eating to escape dealing with hurt or stress in a biblical way is a problem. Eating nothing but junk food isn’t the way to take care of the temple God has given to us. Sexual desires are to be satisfied inside the boundaries of a biblical marriage between a man and a woman, but when sexual urges are pursued that are outside of marriage like pornography or some kind of perversion, it is a problem. We aren’t supposed to be led by the flesh, but by the Spirit. We aren’t supposed to count on the flesh to satisfy us, but on God Himself. Who or what is leading your life right now?
In the wilderness temptations, Satan thought he could easily convince Jesus that turning those stones into bread would be a logical idea. Jesus deserved to eat. On the temptation spectrum it seems pretty benign, right? You are hungry, just eat. But there was a reason Jesus was fasting. There was a reason Jesus put Himself in that condition. God had purposely called Him into the wilderness. God was sustaining Him. Jesus was fully depending on the Heavenly Father, and in the power of the Spirit Jesus defeated Satan’s first attempt to derail Him.
In the second temptation, Satan urged Jesus to jump from the highest point of the temple and to test God’s protection by relying on a miraculous intervention from God. Jesus rejected it. He didn’t need to put God in a situation where He had to prove His protection over Jesus. Jesus knew He could trust His Heavenly Father without putting Him to the test. Do you know what God wants from us? He wants us to simply trust and obey Him. Listen, we don’t demand for God to jump through our hoops. We can’t manipulate Him, and we dare not try. God has promised His protection over our lives, and instead of being tempted to test any of that, we need to learn to trust Him fully.
In the third and final temptation, Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just bow down and worship Him. The allure of worldly power is a trap for many people. Jesus didn’t bite. Rejecting the pursuit of worldly power, Jesus reserved His worship for God alone. Jesus wasn’t going to compromise His Divine mission or His simple allegiance to God to chase earthly power. He had come to usher in a Kingdom much larger than any earthly kingdom anyway. As Jesus trusted the Spirit of God who led Him into the wilderness in the first place, He would trust God to sustain Him, He would trust God to protect Him, and He would stay bowed down to His Heavenly Father regardless of what was offered, promised, or might seem good to Him in a moment.
As Jesus underwent each of these temptations, He was helping us become wise to the devil’s schemes. Satan thought he was going into the wilderness to compromise Jesus while all the while Jesus was exposing how Satan operates so that we would know how to deal with him. Satan’s strategies include getting us focused on the desires of the flesh and the things of the world, to get us to trust him instead of trusting God, and to get us to worship Him instead of worshiping God by getting us to pursue earthly power and control.
Are you following the flesh or the Spirit of the living God? Some of you may be battle weary this morning. In your physical body, you are tired. In your emotional capacities, you are spent. I am telling you, that you can gain the victory if you move out into the realm of the Spirit and get out of the realm of your flesh and your feelings.
Jesus has shown us how to deal with temptation. We need to shut it down, like He did in the wilderness testing, by standing on the Word of God. He has exposed the enemy for us. We know who Satan is. He is a predator, a liar, a thief, a murderer, a masquerader, a deceiver, and is the creator of chaos and confusion. It’s time to stand up to Him by standing in Christ. Armor up, Church. Let’s declare war on the enemy during the 40 days of Lent. Let’s not only shut Satan down, but let’s take back what he has stolen from us! Enough is enough.
Let’s put down the flesh. Let’s trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on our own understanding. Let’s bow daily before the Lord of Heaven and fix our eyes on Jesus, the One who knows the way through the wilderness. As we do, we will be kept by Heaven’s hands! Jesus battled. Jesus won. There’s victory in Jesus!
