This tape contains two sermons delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The title of both is Led by the Spirit, Tempted by the Devil, and the scripture reference is Matthew 4, verses 1 through 11. The first sermon was given on March 8, 1981, and follows on this side. The second sermon was delivered on March 15th and commences at the beginning of side two. 

This Sunday and next, I want to meditate with you on this familiar story at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The temptation, the three-fold temptation. I've frankly never been able to get over the first verse.

It's recorded identically in Matthew chapter 4 and in Luke chapter 4. Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Led by the Spirit, tempted by the devil.

On the surface, it would seem as if those were contrary to each other. Almost an outright contradiction. that if you're led by the Spirit, the last thing that's going to happen to you is that you're going to be tempted by the devil.

If you're tempted by the devil, how can you presume to say you're being led by the Spirit? I wonder how many of you have noticed, in your own experience, that it's when you begin to really get serious about allowing the Spirit to lead you, that the devil takes you seriously, and begins to try to come in and sow some weeds along with the wheat that God is bringing to harvest in your life. Have you noticed that?

Jesus begins His ministry. And out of all the things that He might have chosen to do, out of the urgent needs of all the people that He came to preach to, to teach, to heal, to touch, to bless, to liberate from captivity, to heal, and to save, out of all the urgency of having only three years in which to do it. What's the first thing on his agenda?

He sets as his highest priority to go and be alone with his Father, to meditate on God's Word, to fast, to pray, to seek the Father's face. That says something to me. perhaps it says something to you I find in my own experience that somehow I'm able to schedule almost everything else and yet it's my quiet time it's my Bible study it's my prayer time that somehow gets interrupted gets distracted I may be the only one is there anybody else here like that?

why is that? you know you can schedule anything else and yet you sit down to pray and immediately you think of that telephone call that you absolutely have to make or the letter that has to be written or the bill that has to be paid or there's a snake in your garden. Satan knows that if he can derail you at that particular point, he's got it all.

The most important thing, the priority, is spending quality time with God. Out of that issues everything else. If that's disturbed, nothing else is going to quite fit.

the first commandment is this love God then your neighbor give God the priority and if Jesus needed to do that how much more you and I and if Satan thought that he could get an end to Jesus life at that point you think you're going to be invulnerable isn't it interesting you might have supposed that of all the moments in Jesus' life, this would be the one at which Satan would be least likely to approach Jesus. I mean, he's been 30 years in preparation. He's gone down to the River Jordan and John has publicly hailed Him as the Savior, the Messiah.

Jesus has entered into the water, come up again, and the Spirit of God has descended on Him bodily as a dove. He's anointed Him and empowered Him for ministry. And if that weren't enough, the Father Himself has spoken audibly from heaven so that all the crowd of people heard Him, this is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.

The moment has come. You can just hear the angels and the archangels cheering, go get them, Jesus! And Jesus sets this time aside to be with His Father.

And Satan picks this moment to come to tempt him. How extraordinary. Some of you have just had a marvelous experience in the Life in the Spirit seminar, and you were absolutely sure that if God entered your life in some new way, some new experience of His Spirit and empowerment, and perhaps a new gift to enjoy, a gift of the Spirit, that finally you would put behind you forevermore all those struggles that you had as a Christian, right?

Hmm, yes. And it lasted until you got into the car with your wife, right? And somehow you found something to argue about on the way home from...

You got it. The moment we begin to really allow the Spirit of God to come into our lives and take Him seriously is the moment at which Satan takes us seriously. But it's more than that.

And I want you to see this very clearly. It's much more than that. Not just that Satan was waiting and, uh-oh, Jesus is doing something, I better stop it.

What the Scripture says, He was led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. Did you hear that? He was led by the Spirit into that temptation.

It was within the will and purpose of God that He be tempted. How do you understand that? Satan had his purposes and God had his purposes and they were directly contrary to each other.

But within the larger purposes of God, the smaller purposes of Satan can be used to serve a good end. I wonder if you follow that. Satan's purpose is clearly to defeat Jesus.

To get him to make some sort of a compromise. Just the smallest little thing. Just divert him a little bit at the beginning of his ministry.

You know, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. If I can just get him to twist a little bit, I've got him. Satan's purpose is to defeat Jesus and thereby scuttle the whole ministry.

God's purpose is to have Jesus stand up to that temptation, face it in the power of the Spirit, be victor over it, and thereby become all the more capable and able to carry out the mission God has given him. That stretches my mind. Because the one I'm speaking about is very God of very God.

Begotten before the foundation of the world. God of God. Light of light.

He's already perfect. What does it mean to become more perfect? Maybe it's like a balloon.

It's already full of air and yet it can get more full of air. Jesus is already full of perfection and yet God wants him to get more full he's already full of the Spirit God wants him to get more full do you know that God was never done with Jesus do you know that? he kept working one of the hardest strangest verses in the whole Bible Hebrews 5.8 says though he was a son he learned obedience through the things he suffered and the first thing he suffered and perhaps the central thing in all suffering is to suffer temptation you know that's what other suffering is about if you're experiencing pain disease bereavement despair loss of job confusion kids are in rebellion parents are in rebellion whatever what does it do?

it tempts us to get angry at God to become embittered to take things into our own hands and do something about it, to lean onto our own understanding, it tempts us away from God. That's what suffering does. And that's what temptation is all about.

And so Satan, at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, chooses this moment, when you might have thought he was invulnerable, to come and attack. Be on guard, friends. We have an enemy who's going about like a ravening lion seeking to destroy us.

The more serious you get about God, the more you're going to encounter Him. But God uses Him for His own purposes. God's purpose is that Jesus face up to that temptation and it's like exercising a muscle.

It gets stronger. And that's what God wants for us. God is going to lead you, hear me, He's going to lead you into temptation.

That ought to be raising a problem for you because day after day, week after week, we pray, lead us not into temptation. Why do we pray that? Mainly because it's a really bad translation.

What it really says is, what it really should say, the sense of it is, lead me through temptation or lead me out of temptation. Lead me into victory in the midst of temptation. Save me from it.

In fact, in the new authorized version, the modern version that's an alternative in the prayer book, it's translated, save us from the time of trial. See, there will be trials. There will be temptations.

But we call out in the midst of them, God, give me your strength because I can't cope by myself. I'm interested in the way this temptation begins. Satan comes up and says, if you're the Son of God.

If you're the Son of God. The immediately preceding paragraph says God Himself pronounces publicly, this is My Son. And Satan comes up to Him and He says, are you?

Are you sure that you're the Son of God? Oh, Jesus, of course, we all know that all men are God's sons, but surely you don't mean that you think you have some kind of special relationship, some unique sense in which you're the Son of God. You heard a voice.

Isn't that quaint? Have you seen your friendly neighborhood psychologist recently? A virgin birth, you say?

Yes. You're the Son of God. Are you sure that you're the Son of God, Jesus?

Well, if you are, prove it. If Jesus is convinced that He's the Son of God, He doesn't need to prove it, does He? But the temptation is to doubt what God has said.

Is your mind able to accommodate the proposition that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, would be tempted to doubt who He is? I can't make any sense of that being a temptation unless that were the case. Satan's first line of attack is to come and to call into question what God has said.

And that is consistently so. That is where every temptation begins. How do we first meet Him?

In the garden. He comes to Adam and Eve and He says, Did God say, You shall not eat? Are you sure you heard it right?

and so he comes to Jesus are you? did you get it right Jesus? do you understand?

are you really the son of God? if you are then prove it how about you? do you believe that you are the child of God by his grace?

do you believe that your sins are forgiven if you've trusted in Christ? Do you believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that if you were to die on the way home, you'd go to heaven? Every Sunday morning for year after year, you've heard a minister of the Gospel stand up and say something like this.

God hath empowered His ministers to declare and pronounce to His people being penitent the absolution and remission of their sins, He pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent. Your sins are washed away. You're clean.

You're free. Do you believe that? I'm absolutely amazed at the number of Episcopalians that I talk to who you ask them, are your sins forgiven?

They say, boy, I hope so. Are you going to heaven? Boy, I hope so.

We end every single communion service by thanking God for assuring us that we are living members of the body of Christ and heirs of eternal life. Do you believe that? I'm glad some of you do.

If you are the Son of God, prove it. See? Jesus doesn't have to prove anything.

But there's the temptation. And interestingly enough, Satan comes and tempts him to do something which is perfectly legitimate we think of temptation as being a temptation to do something that is evil that is immoral that breaks a commandment that's temptation what's in this that breaks a commandment? if you are the son of God turn these stones into bread Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in the scripture with marvelous understatements and he was hungry.

And you hear his stomach growling there out in the wilderness and Satan comes along with a brilliant idea. If you are, go ahead. Satisfy your hunger.

What's wrong with that? I suspect that it was not merely a matter of appealing to Jesus' own hunger and His own growling stomach, but think of all those other hungry people. just down at the foot of the mountain.

Think of all the poor and needy. You believe, don't you, Jesus, that the Spirit of the Lord is upon you to preach good news to the poor. You do believe that.

Now, how about coming down the mountainside with an armload of bread? That's pretty good news to the poor. Start a little welfare program going here.

What credibility that will lend to your ministry. Jesus, you'll have them literally eating out of the palm of your hand. what's wrong with that at a little later point in the story we have God himself telling Jesus to feed the hungry take a little bread break it, break it, break it, break it suddenly it's enough to feed 5,000 people and 12 baskets full left over there's nothing wrong with giving bread to the hungry God seems to be in the bread business what's wrong with this Jesus' answer tells you and it's one of those lovely quotations from scripture that we always get wrong we take it out of context and we read half of it man shall not live by bread alone period but that's not the whole quotation Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 8 and the whole quotation is but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

What's he saying? He's saying, that's a mighty fine suggestion, Satan, but I have one problem with it. My father has not told me to do that.

I'm not going to make my decision on the basis of my growling stomach or even the need of the people around me or my best insight into the matter. I'm going to do what my Father tells me to. And He hasn't told me to turn stones into bread.

And so, I'm sorry, I can't do that. Do you get the drama here? Of the incarnate Son of God, the Holy One, submitting Himself to the authority of the Father and waiting for a word from God before He takes it into His own hands.

I'm amazed at that. How many well-meaning programs by how many well-meaning Christians have been launched without ever waiting for a word from God? How many decisions do you and I make day after day after day?

And God never had a word to say on the subject. And Jesus, I've said this before, I think it's worth saying again, Jesus is the only man who ever lived who never did anything. He never did anything.

Of Himself. He says, I can do only what my Father tells me to do. There comes a point where God says, feed the hungry.

And Jesus does it. But at this moment, He hasn't spoken and so I won't. The beginning of the temptation is to doubt what God has said. Then it develops with a little bit deeper temptation to go beyond what God has said.

take things into your own hands and it ends in presumption if you are the son of God command these stones because if you are then you can have whatever you want just say it just claim it and it will be yours go ahead claim what you want you are the son of God you can have it command it into being sounds chillingly familiar to me. There's a teaching making its way around renewal circles that whatever we want we can just claim. That it's God's will for us always and everywhere to be healthy.

And you can just claim it. Yet I read Scripture says it pleased God to bruise His Son. How arrogant of me to think that He may not bruise me.

I hear from some people that it is God's will that I inevitably be successful and wealthy just claim it and yet scripture says to me though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor it pleased God for him to be impoverished and he did not have the arrogance to claim it simply because He wanted it. Do you follow what I'm saying? I'm absolutely fascinated at this first interchange.

I have no doubt whatever that Jesus could have constructed a perfectly compelling case for the legitimacy of turning stone into bread, not only for Himself, but for others. Instead, I find the Almighty One come among us, submitting Himself to a restraint on the basis of the Word of God written and a commitment to wait until the Spirit of God applies that Word in a specific way. My Father hasn't spoken on the subject.

And until He tells me to do that, Satan, I'm not moving. The temptation begins with Satan calling into question what God has said. Did God say?

And the victory begins with Jesus' answer, God said. Let's bow our heads together. Satan, we really like your suggestions.

But we would say to you, be gone. in the name of Jesus be gone we would be those who submit ourselves to the authority of the Father and His alone Lord God we would be those whose lives are bounded by Your Word written thank You for the example of our Savior and our Master the Lord Jesus Himself how incredible that we would ever think to set aside Your Word when He so consistently submitted to it. And Father, we further confess that we are those who need the specific application of that Word moment by moment as we open our lives to Your Spirit's promptings.

We would belong more fully to You and we would be victors in the midst of temptation for Christ's sake. Amen.