The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 24 - The Three Things We Can Learn From Christ's Temptation In The Desert

00:00:00.000 So, what we face in our culture, our great trial is temptation. That's our battle. And, of course, every Christian across the world has to deal, across history, has to deal with temptation of one kind or another, but not every Christian has lived or does live as we do now in a world, in a culture, I should say, seemingly designed with no other purpose than to tempt. 0.52

00:00:30.000 So, we're surrounded on all sides by this temptation. Every time we go on our phones, every time we go online, you scroll down a news feed, every time you turn on the TV, every time you walk outside of your home, every time you enter into conversation with another person out in the world, every time we do anything or go anywhere, we're subject to this intense, relentless, constant temptation, which is why I'll sometimes hear Christians say that,

00:00:59.180 well, you know, we've got it easy here in this country in comparison to Christians overseas who are persecuted. We're the ones who got the easy end of the bargain, which is true physically. Physically, we've got it a lot easier. That's definitely true.

00:01:15.740 So, spiritually, we really don't, which is why I would wager that in the end, if we're taking count here, if we're counting heads, I think in the end, there are going to be far more Christians from the Middle East who suffer persecution.

00:01:37.340 Far more of them are going to be in heaven than Christians here because our culture, this atmosphere, is so effective at drawing Christians, luring them into a life of materialism, hedonism, nihilism. 1.00

00:01:53.540 Our entire culture is kind of a current running away from Christ. So, even if you don't go out of your way to indulge every vice like our culture wants you to do, but even if you don't, still, you could be swept up and kind of swept away, ultimately into hell, if you just try to sort of exist, get along, without making any considered effort to actually be a Christian. 0.72

00:02:20.640 If you don't actually practice self-denial, if you don't practice obedience, if you're not always walking towards God and making that effort to do so, swimming against the stream, if you don't, then the force of everything will just cause you to drift in the opposite direction.

00:02:42.200 So, what I'm saying is that the greatest temptation in our culture isn't any one temptation or another, although they're all serious.

00:02:52.240 But the greatest temptation is simply the temptation not to worry much about temptation, not to worry much about being a Christian, not to worry much about denying yourself, and to just kind of go with the flow.

00:03:05.980 So, that's the number one temptation for us is to go with the flow, and it's a very potent, very tempting temptation, and one that I believe has claimed many, many, many souls.

00:03:18.980 I think there are many souls in hell who, on the outside, if we were just viewing their life, if we could just kind of rewind the tape and look back at everything they did, we wouldn't find many instances of them doing something that seems from the outside especially horrible.

00:03:38.380 What we would see instead is just a whole lot of little, just a life that was consumed by these, quote, little sins, and they just kind of went with it, and just sort of floated and just existed, going with the flow, just going wherever the culture goes.

00:03:58.840 If the culture says, well, this is okay, then they did that thing.

00:04:02.620 You know, whatever it is.

00:04:03.920 What everyone else is doing, they did it.

00:04:05.620 But they weren't, it's not like they were out killing people, it's not like they were rapists, child molesters, you know, we're not talking about that.

00:04:13.680 But just people who, you know, whatever everyone thinks is fine, they just, you know, they'll do that.

00:04:19.760 I think hell is probably primarily populated with those kinds of people.

00:04:24.460 So, I think it may be worthwhile to try to understand what exactly temptation is and how we handle it.

00:04:31.920 And for this, as always, of course, we can turn to Scripture.

00:04:35.960 And there's a story in Scripture that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the story of Christ's temptation in the desert.

00:04:45.480 We're told that at the beginning of his public ministry, right after he was baptized, Jesus went out to the desert.

00:04:52.140 He was led to the desert, we were told, in order to undergo this trial, in order to be tempted by Satan.

00:05:00.160 He went to the desert to be tempted by Satan.

00:05:02.960 And so, it seems kind of like he was going to the desert and sort of calling Satan out.

00:05:09.360 He was saying, okay, Satan, come and do your worst.

00:05:11.940 Now's your chance.

00:05:12.880 And he went into this duel with Satan with one hand tied behind his back, metaphorically, because he starved himself for 40 days first.

00:05:21.440 And then he said, all right, Satan, here I am.

00:05:24.480 Do your worst.

00:05:25.940 Now, why did he do this?

00:05:27.360 I've been thinking a lot about that question.

00:05:29.440 What was the point of this whole scene?

00:05:32.160 I think there are a couple of reasons for that.

00:05:33.860 Probably more than a couple.

00:05:35.160 But here are the couple that in my little meager mind I can see.

00:05:39.680 First, we know that Christ was fully man and fully God.

00:05:41.980 And if he was going to be fully man, then he was going to share entirely in the human experience.

00:05:47.840 He was going to drink from the cup of human experience completely.

00:05:52.980 And so, he did.

00:05:53.720 And a big part of the human experience, especially for us, but for all people, is temptation.

00:06:00.060 So, he went to be tempted.

00:06:02.220 But Christ was like man in every way except sin.

00:06:06.460 So, Christ had no spiritual weaknesses.

00:06:09.440 So, we couldn't experience temptation exactly the way that we experience it.

00:06:14.800 When you and I are tempted, the devil is not coming up to us physically in person and saying,

00:06:20.720 hey, why don't you do this?

00:06:22.580 Right?

00:06:22.840 That's not how we get tempted.

00:06:24.360 Because we're spiritually weak and frail.

00:06:26.760 So, evil can kind of, we have these sort of cracks in our soul that evil can enter into

00:06:32.660 and speak to us within ourselves and entice us.

00:06:37.820 So, when we're tempted to do something, if we're saying, oh, I was tempted to do X, Y, Z,

00:06:43.940 it means that there's a real part of you that really wants to do that thing and is enticed by it.

00:06:50.480 And so, you're arguing with yourself, should I do it or should I not?

00:06:54.360 Right?

00:06:54.720 And you've got that internal dialogue going on.

00:06:56.960 But there's definitely this significant force within you that is telling you, yes, do it.

00:07:02.100 And you really want to do it.

00:07:04.120 That's how the temptation works for mere mortals like us.

00:07:07.920 But for Christ, he doesn't have those cracks in his soul.

00:07:10.420 So, when he was being tempted by the devil, there was never any part of him that said to himself,

00:07:16.140 oh, yeah, maybe I should do that.

00:07:17.620 You know?

00:07:17.920 There was never a part of him that said, yeah, maybe I should worship the devil.

00:07:21.560 Maybe I'm, hmm, let me think about it.

00:07:23.500 And I think this is something that Christians, I got into an argument, actually, with a group

00:07:27.300 of Christians recently about this.

00:07:28.720 And they insisted that, no, he was really human.

00:07:31.360 So, that means that he, you know, he was tempted just like we are.

00:07:35.020 Okay, so you mean, you're telling me that you think Christ, that God incarnate,

00:07:38.780 that there was a part of him that actually wanted to worship the devil.

00:07:43.240 That's what you think.

00:07:44.580 No.

00:07:45.600 Because that part of you that wants to do sinful things, that is a result of sin.

00:07:51.260 Christ has no sin.

00:07:52.840 But he can be tempted externally, which means that the temptation can sort of walk up to him,

00:07:57.980 not get inside him, but walk up to him and speak to him.

00:08:01.320 And he allowed that.

00:08:02.760 Anyway, so I think that was one part of the reason.

00:08:05.700 But the second part is that he was exposing, I think he was exposing Satan.

00:08:11.020 He was kind of drawing the snake out from under the rock so that we could see him and understand

00:08:18.340 him and see how evil functions.

00:08:22.340 I think that's the main thing we could take away from this story.

00:08:26.100 It's a very important story.

00:08:26.940 That Jesus is showing us Satan.

00:08:32.420 Showing us this is how temptation works.

00:08:35.880 So Satan thought that he was going to get the best of God, but really it was the other

00:08:40.160 way around.

00:08:41.100 He came out and he was exposed.

00:08:43.200 And we all learned quite a lot about him from this exchange.

00:08:47.780 And what did we learn?

00:08:48.540 Well, first we learned that Satan, evil, is prideful to the point of insanity.

00:08:54.340 I mean, think about it.

00:08:55.760 The devil was trying to tempt God.

00:08:58.820 How crazy is that?

00:09:00.220 He must have known that it wasn't going to work, that there was no way.

00:09:03.740 He must have known on some level, given that he knows who God is and he understands God

00:09:10.640 far more than any of us do.

00:09:12.620 So he must have known that there was no way this was going to work, that he was only going

00:09:16.600 to be humiliated in the end.

00:09:18.520 But he tried anyway.

00:09:19.560 And that's pride, because Satan is just pride.

00:09:23.480 And we do the same thing, don't we?

00:09:25.880 In our pride, we try to win these little sort of victories over God.

00:09:30.680 God tells us to reject sin, to live holy, virtuous lives.

00:09:34.120 God tells us that that's the only way we're going to be happy and that we're going to have

00:09:37.620 joyful lives.

00:09:38.900 Yet we go looking for joy elsewhere.

00:09:40.740 We know that God's telling...

00:09:41.700 If we believe, that means that we know God's telling the truth.

00:09:44.040 We know that it's true.

00:09:44.840 We know that sin can lead to only death and misery, yet we do it anyway.

00:09:49.900 We try to kind of game the system.

00:09:51.740 We want to see if we can have it both ways.

00:09:53.320 We want to see if we can have the joy and can we have the sin as well.

00:09:56.760 Knowing, so on one level we're doing that, but on another level, we know that it's not

00:10:01.160 going to work, yet we do it.

00:10:02.920 We go looking for joy where it cannot be.

00:10:05.040 We look for joy within our favorite sins, knowing intellectually that these sins will bring

00:10:11.580 us only misery, but there's a part of us that thinks, well, maybe we can have it all.

00:10:16.060 Maybe we can have everything, right?

00:10:18.660 We can have the joy of this sin and the joy of eternal life, and that's just pride.

00:10:23.260 We are humiliating ourselves the way that Satan humiliated himself.

00:10:27.580 And so Jesus drew evil out into the open in full view so that we can recognize it within

00:10:34.240 ourselves, so that we can look into those cracks in the soul to see, okay, that's what's

00:10:40.160 going on there.

00:10:40.740 I think the next thing that we learned, which is a very scary thing, is that Satan is a theologian.

00:10:50.100 Pope Benedict wrote a book called Jesus of Nazareth, which is a great book, recommend for everybody.

00:10:54.960 And he makes this point.

00:10:56.140 He says, Satan is a theologian.

00:10:58.280 He knows scripture backwards and forwards.

00:11:01.540 And so he uses God's own book against him.

00:11:04.300 He gets into this theological debate with God because he knows the book, and he knows it

00:11:09.900 better than we do.

00:11:11.420 He tempts him.

00:11:13.300 Christ quotes the scripture at him.

00:11:17.340 And then what does Satan do?

00:11:19.360 He throws it right back at him, which again is pride, but it also shows, well, he knows.

00:11:24.980 He knows the Bible.

00:11:25.940 And that tells us that, first of all, knowledge of the Bible does not in itself mean that a person

00:11:32.880 is saved.

00:11:33.940 Just as believing that Jesus is the Son of God, believing that he's the Messiah, that's 0.94

00:11:41.680 not going to save you either because Satan knows both of those things.

00:11:45.080 He doesn't just believe them.

00:11:46.660 He knows them.

00:11:48.360 Satan knows the Bible.

00:11:49.380 He could recite it.

00:11:50.360 He could recite the entire thing.

00:11:52.280 Could you?

00:11:52.780 Because I can't.

00:11:54.120 And Satan knows for certain that Jesus is the Son of God, is the Messiah.

00:11:58.340 Yet Satan is still Satan.

00:12:00.240 Satan's flaw is not that he believes the wrong thing.

00:12:03.060 It's not that he doesn't know the Bible enough.

00:12:04.960 It's not that he doesn't know who God is.

00:12:06.600 He's confused.

00:12:07.300 It's not that he's an atheist and he pretends that God doesn't exist.

00:12:11.600 Okay, if he was going to pretend that Jesus didn't exist, then this whole scene in the

00:12:15.260 desert never would have happened.

00:12:17.000 That's not it at all.

00:12:18.100 His great flaw, his great sin that got him cast out of heaven is that he does not love

00:12:24.240 God and he will not serve him.

00:12:27.480 It's got nothing at all to do with belief or knowing the Bible or anything like that.

00:12:32.360 It's just, I will not serve.

00:12:34.800 That's what Satan said.

00:12:35.860 I will not serve.

00:12:37.200 So next we learn, and this is very important, I think.

00:12:40.400 Next we learn the forms of temptation that will be used against us.

00:12:45.260 And this is what makes it, so this is Christ's brilliance, is that he is showing us essentially

00:12:53.100 the three great forms of temptation, where he's not showing us, Satan is showing us.

00:12:59.200 He's drawn Satan out and then Satan will expose himself by showing us not just who he is, but

00:13:04.940 also the exact forms of temptation he's going to use.

00:13:08.320 So Satan tempts Christ first to turn rocks into bread so that he can eat, which is appealing 0.80

00:13:15.480 to his physical appetites.

00:13:16.880 Then Satan tempts Christ to throw himself off a cliff and allow the angels to come save him

00:13:23.520 in some great demonstration of his heavenly power.

00:13:29.780 And that's an appeal to pride and to ego.

00:13:34.900 And that's a temptation that a lot that you and I probably, we would be very tempted to

00:13:40.300 actually go through with that.

00:13:41.240 If we knew, you know, if someone told us that, you know what, you could jump off of this building

00:13:46.680 in front of everybody and a great swarm of angels will come and grab you out of the air

00:13:54.980 and place you back on the ground.

00:13:57.120 Well, that'd be a very serious temptation.

00:13:59.400 So that's pride and ego.

00:14:01.760 That's what he's, Satan's trying to appeal to.

00:14:04.180 And then he tempts Christ to worship him, the devil.

00:14:07.700 And in return, he'll receive all the power in the world.

00:14:11.480 And that's an appeal to materialism.

00:14:13.680 So there we have it. 0.93

00:14:14.660 We see here that Satan seeks to make of us gluttons, egoists, and materialists. 0.92

00:14:21.980 And he'll settle for just one. 0.83

00:14:24.700 But of course, nowadays, he has little trouble getting us to be all three.

00:14:28.320 If he could just get us to be egotistical, then he wouldn't even, then it doesn't even

00:14:32.520 matter if we're, you know, we could, doesn't matter if we're materialistic or gluttonous.

00:14:38.480 But these days, you know, it's no problem.

00:14:41.660 We'll be all those things.

00:14:43.600 And I think the final and really important thing we learn is how we can overcome these

00:14:49.820 temptations.

00:14:50.560 That really is the most important point.

00:14:53.600 When the devil does come to us and says, hey, why don't you do this?

00:14:57.560 And he's whispering in our ear, how do we overcome it?

00:15:00.500 How do we deal with it?

00:15:01.960 Well, how does Christ deal with every salvo from the devil?

00:15:06.240 He quotes scripture.

00:15:08.080 And that was for our benefit, not his.

00:15:10.780 I mean, this was all for us.

00:15:12.640 Christ could have easily said to the devil, get out of here.

00:15:15.560 What? 0.94

00:15:16.140 You know, could have swatted him away like a fly, right? 0.81

00:15:19.280 A little twerp. 0.98

00:15:19.980 Because he could have smacked them halfway across the desert if he wanted to.

00:15:23.860 I mean, we have to understand that. 0.93

00:15:25.820 Satan, in comparison to Christ, is just a little fly, a little gnat. 0.61

00:15:30.680 He's just nothingness.

00:15:33.080 So Jesus could have done that.

00:15:35.100 Could have just ignored him.

00:15:36.760 But he didn't because that would not be a model that we can follow.

00:15:41.440 Christ can respond to the devil that way if he wants to.

00:15:44.400 We cannot because we're no match.

00:15:47.120 Christ is a match.

00:15:48.180 He's much more than a match for the devil.

00:15:50.360 The devil's nothing in comparison to him.

00:15:52.400 Literally nothing in comparison to him.

00:15:55.240 But it's different for us.

00:15:57.300 We're no match for the devil.

00:15:59.160 We're no match for the forces of hell.

00:16:01.300 Satan is smarter than us.

00:16:02.520 He's stronger than us.

00:16:03.380 He's more powerful.

00:16:04.240 He knows scripture more than we do.

00:16:06.700 He knows our own religion better than we do.

00:16:08.920 So we can't win an argument with him.

00:16:10.700 We can't win a fight with him.

00:16:12.820 We're puny.

00:16:13.720 We're weak.

00:16:15.100 I mean, he can stay focused.

00:16:16.980 He's going to stay focused.

00:16:18.800 When he's got a plan of action, a plan of attack for how he's going to take you down,

00:16:22.860 he'll stay focused on it your entire life, and he's never going to waver from it.

00:16:25.820 Whereas you can't stay focused on anything for more than two seconds, right? 0.65

00:16:29.460 You and I, we're like these just ridiculous little butterflies fluttering around from one 0.96

00:16:34.680 thing to the next. 0.99

00:16:35.380 We can't stay focused.

00:16:37.500 Satan is staying focused on us.

00:16:38.740 So, you know, we're outmatched.

00:16:40.100 And Satan could eat us for breakfast without a problem.

00:16:44.840 We can't beat him.

00:16:46.080 We can't beat him on our own, that is.

00:16:49.320 And so I think what Christ is telling us with his response is, is we cannot rely on our own

00:16:56.500 understandings.

00:16:57.400 We can't rely on our own strength.

00:16:59.080 We can't rely on our own resilience.

00:17:01.500 And he's telling us to just grasp onto God, onto our faith, to use the Bible as our shield

00:17:06.300 because he can't harm us when we're huddled close to the Lord.

00:17:10.780 He can't grab us.

00:17:12.500 He can't take us when we're walking with Christ because we can go where he cannot.

00:17:19.540 We can flee into the arms of God.

00:17:21.420 We can stand beneath the cross as our shelter.

00:17:24.240 Satan can.

00:17:25.960 You know, what Christ is saying is, listen, when the devil came for me, I had scripture and

00:17:32.300 prayer.

00:17:32.840 I relied on the Father and on scripture.

00:17:36.300 That's what I did.

00:17:37.860 So what do you think is going to happen to you if you do not have those things as a shield?

00:17:42.760 If I had that shield, what chance do you have going up against the devil with nothing, unarmed?

00:17:49.420 You have no chance.

00:17:51.600 And this is very important because we live now in a desert of our own.

00:17:55.440 We live in kind of a spiritual desert.

00:17:58.080 And we really are alone out here, you and I.

00:18:01.100 We can't look to the world to have our back, to support us, to encourage us when the devil

00:18:06.000 comes for us.

00:18:09.240 And to try to resist the devil, to resist temptation, to try to live a pure and holy life, to attempt

00:18:14.740 to be virtuous.

00:18:15.460 This is only going to provoke laughter and jeers from those around you, including other Christians.

00:18:22.040 They're just going to mock you.

00:18:24.380 And as Satan grabs you by the ankles and tries to drag you into hell and you cling desperately

00:18:29.240 to any kind of rock or root that you can find, the world will come and start kind of prying

00:18:35.980 your fingers loose.

00:18:37.660 Stop resisting.

00:18:39.500 It'll tell you.

00:18:40.840 And it'll just sneer at you and spit on you. 1.00

00:18:43.660 It'll make you feel stupid for even caring. 1.00

00:18:46.500 This is the situation that we face. 0.99

00:18:48.800 There's a war happening here, but it's a spiritual war.

00:18:53.320 And much of it is invisible to us.

00:18:56.600 And the tactic of the evil one, which is very different from the tactic that he uses in other

00:19:02.920 parts of the world.

00:19:03.660 But for us, his tactic is to just numb our souls and to fill our stomachs and to rub our

00:19:10.120 shoulders and to pamper us and to just give us everything our hearts desire.

00:19:16.300 And even when we've had everything that our hearts desire, he'll give us more so that our

00:19:21.760 hearts will develop new desires.

00:19:24.000 And these desires become progressively more depraved and disordered as we're just looking

00:19:28.900 for more things to want.

00:19:32.000 And so the devil's very happy with us just being comfortable.

00:19:35.300 He's fine with that.

00:19:36.660 That's what we should understand, that the devil doesn't want you to be uncomfortable.

00:19:42.080 As far as he's good, he doesn't want you to be uncomfortable.

00:19:44.380 He doesn't want you to experience any pain or anything right now, right now.

00:19:48.840 And he wants you to just indulge and to be happy right now.

00:19:54.380 And so that's why I think, of course, we look to Scripture and we look to the example that

00:19:59.080 we've been given.

00:20:00.420 And the example is, you know, we just have to cling desperately to God.

00:20:05.720 And that's our only chance.

00:20:08.040 But it's more than a chance, of course.

00:20:09.960 If we actually do that, it's if we actually stay with God and cling to him and stay in

00:20:15.820 his light, then it is a certainty that we will be safe.

00:20:19.360 The problem is that so few of us actually do that.

00:20:22.200 So just a couple of reflections from Scripture for us today.

00:20:27.020 I'll leave it there.

00:20:27.960 Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:20:28.900 Godspeed.

00:20:29.260 Thanks for watching, everybody.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 07, 2018

Ep. 24 - The Three Things We Can Learn From Christ's Temptation In The Desert

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