Victory over Satan

Background Scripture: Matthew 4
Lesson Scripture: Matthew 4:1–11; Hebrews 2:16–18

Introduction

When soldiers go into battle, they know that some of them may never return. Men have gone into battles where not a single soldier of their company survived; they encountered an enemy whose strength and cunning overwhelmed them. They had gone out in search of victory only to find defeat.

Our spiritual battle will not end with a negotiated peace or a partial surrender. Either we will fall vanquished at Satan’s feet, or he will retreat from us defeated. Jesus, the captain of our salvation (Heb. 2:10), has shown us the way to victory. Knowing that He returned triumphant from His trial of temptation, we can face our own temptations with alertness and confidence—victory is assured for us in Christ and in His Word.

Key Verse

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place (2 Cor. 2:14).

Lesson Scripture

Studying the Lesson

We know very little of Jesus’s life between His birth and His baptism. The story of a single visit to Jerusalem in His childhood is our only glimpse into the thirty quiet years, which are the greater part of Jesus’s time on earth. We know that He was subject to His earthly parents and that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

His baptism by John in the Jordan River is the beginning of the biblical record of His earthly ministry. John baptized those who repented and confessed their sins (Mark 1:4–5). The only confession at Jesus’s baptism was John’s confession of his own unworthiness; Jesus had no sins to confess. Nevertheless, at His insistence, He was baptized to “fulfil all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). The Holy Spirit descended on Him from heaven in the form of a dove, and a Voice was heard: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). The Spirit then led Jesus into the wilderness for the express purpose of defeating Satan (Matt. 4:1).

Satan’s temptations of Christ show his cunning. In each of them, he presents his “solution” to a legitimate desire. By assuming a physical body, Jesus had accepted the need for physical food; Satan merely suggested a shortcut to get it. Jesus had come to earth to reveal the glory and power of God; Satan offered a dramatic way to do just that. Finally, Jesus and Satan both knew that He had come to establish His kingdom upon earth. Satan showed Him a way to establish it without the painful and shameful crowning at Calvary.

Every temptation eventually leads to a point of decision. The one being tempted must decide, “Will I, or won’t I?” Satan’s logic appealed to the desire of the moment, but Jesus based His every decision on the eternal, immoveable Word of God. His response to each temptation reveals an important detail of the preceding thirty years; He had obviously studied and memorized the Scriptures. Rather than starting useless arguments with Satan, He answered every sly suggestion with Scripture.

Temptation is not sin; it is only an opportunity to sin. It is the voice of evil, offering to guide us on our journey, a road sign deliberately placed to lead us where we do not want to go. Jesus was sinless before He was tempted and equally sinless when the temptation was behind Him. But He knows what it is to hear Satan’s suggestions and to be harassed by his enticing temptations. He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

We can discuss at length the precise details of Jesus’s temptation, but it is mostly fruitless. Scholars have argued about exactly what happened and what all could have happened. We do well to consider what we know with certainty: Jesus was tempted by Satan, and we too will face his deceptive assaults. As Jesus triumphed by the power of the Word of God, we too can triumph over temptation.

Practical Truths for Today

The will of God requires us to choose. Each temptation includes the possibility of going against the divine will. God has willed that man shall be able to choose good or evil.

Satan wants to bring us to a position where we perceive that we can no longer choose, where it appears his decree is our only option. This is the ruthless intention of the foe behind our temptations. He seeks not only to influence our choices but also to deceive us to think we have no power to choose right. Satan wants to destroy our faith in God.

God has not given us the ability to see into the future, and in the moment of temptation, we may not consider the eternal implications of our next action. If we are hungry, we are focused on food, our immediate need. Though the exact consequences of our choices are generally hidden, the promise to the Christian is that “there hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). God not only wants us to choose His way, but He wants us to make that choice because we love Him and believe what He says.

The term “power of choice” can be misleading. Our determination to choose right is not enough when we face an enemy of Satan’s strength and cunning. Not one of us can encounter Satan’s wiles and emerge victorious merely because we have the power to choose. To win against Satan, we need strength much greater than our own. And this brings us to another component of God’s ineffable will. Not only does He want us to choose obedience and choose it by faith, He wants us to allow Him to work out our victory as well.

We will never meet Satan and win by our own strength. Our challenge is not how to meet Satan and conquer, which is humanly impossible. Rather, our challenge is to let the power of God work in our lives so that we can meet Satan as Jesus did—in the strength and power of God. This strength gave Jesus His victory in the desert, and it is available to every child of God. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Although we have access by faith to the power of God, we will not emerge triumphantly from every temptation. We can be divinely inspired and divinely strengthened, but we are, nevertheless, not divine. Every Christian knows that he has a traitor near him in every battle; he must deal with his own earthy, lustful flesh. Our flesh must be slain again and again. Though we may not always distinguish between Satan and our own corrupt desires, both are enemies of the soul.

War is not predictable and orderly, neatly arranged, and beautifully packaged. War is ugly, messy, and abhorrent. When men fight for their lives, they forget everything else in a grim, desperate struggle for survival. They are not fretting about a smudge on their face or a broken fingernail—every thought is intensely focused on their enemy, who is focused on them with savage intensity. When the dust clears and the battle is over, the victor does not look like he just stepped out of a fine restaurant. He is exhausted, filthy, and bloodstained. He may have sustained serious injuries, but he is the victor. The battle is behind him, and he has lived to fight again.

Our spiritual warfare is much the same. Fighting with the power of God on our side does not mean we will come to triumph with little effort. There is no easy, comfortable path to victory. There are times for every Christian when the battle is overwhelming. However, if we have enough faith to cry out to our source of strength, there is no question of victory. We must be willing to fight to the last gasp, but if our confidence is in God, there can be no doubt of the outcome. In the name of Jesus, by the power of the cross, in the strength of the Word of God, we shall overcome. “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37). War-torn brother or sister, do not lose hope. We are on the winning side!

Illustration

A young CSI worker found himself feeling exceptionally tired after a day in the tropical sun. Attributing his weariness to heat and hard work, he ignored how he was feeling and kept on working. But a day or two later, he chose to stay home from a church function, saying, “I’m just not feeling well today.” After a few hours, the delirious young man with a very high fever was hurried to the hospital, where he spent the next few days fighting for his life.

Anyone familiar with the tropics recognizes the classic symptoms of malaria, a disease that has killed millions of people. Once malaria has entered the bloodstream, usually through a mosquito bite, the parasites begin to multiply. If treatment is given early, a malaria patient may feel nothing more serious than aching weariness. Left untreated, what could have been a minor affair swiftly becomes a matter of life and death. A fatherless family or brokenhearted parents may trace their grief to a single mosquito bite. Death could have been avoided if only treatment had been given sooner.

We are all infected from birth with the sin parasite in our spiritual bloodstream. In a matter of time these parasites begin to multiply. Like malaria, the sin parasite will cause death unless treatment is sought. The sooner we apply to Calvary for treatment, the less devastating the results of sin. Our spiritual battle is an urgent matter of utmost importance. Jesus is our healing, our hope, and our victory. “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:14).

Questions

1. Is it helpful to analyze why I have failed when I have lost a battle?
2. How do I know whether I am fighting in my own strength or the power of God?
3. What is walking in the way of temptation? (James 1:13–15; Matt. 6:13).
4. Must we always actively fight, or is there a time to “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord”? (Exod. 14:13).
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Source: COGICM Daily Bible Readings (Daily Bible Readings, PO Box 124, Glenn, CA 95943).