As I meditated this week on Luke 4:1-13 and the temptation of Jesus, something profound jumped out at me. Satan knows the Scripture! In fact, he seems to know it quite well. Both in the Garden of Eden and in the wilderness as he was tempting the first Adam and the second Adam, he quoted the Word of God...with incredible accuracy.
This bothers me. This bothers me because we can so easily be deceived by this. You see, it’s one thing the be tempted by something evil...something that we know is wrong and harmful. It’s much easier to walk away from that kind of temptation. But this...this is something entirely different. This is twisted Scripture. Taking the Word of God and twisting it to mean something it doesn’t mean or to justify sin and self-glorification. Now that is much more subtle and difficult to discern!
But let’s face it, most of us are far more likely to be caught in this trap of deception than we ever will be in being tempted with something evil! You see...Satan’s temptation always has been and always will be, to get us to put ourselves in the place of God. That was the original temptation. It was the temptation that Jesus faced. It is the temptation that we face a million times a day. And he will use whatever means he can to do that...even the words of God. And we fall for it, first of all because we love to be god of our own lives. We want this more than anything else in the world. We want to seek our own satisfaction. We want to seek our own glory. We want to seek power for ourselves. We want to seek our own justification. We want to seek our own salvation. We truly want to be god. It’s underneath every one of our sins. It’s in the core of our being.
But secondly, we fall for it because we don’t really know Scripture. We are much more in touch with our culture. We are far more inclined to pick up a novel, to pop in a movie than we are to intentionally sit down and study the Word of God for understanding.
In our minds let us go back to the first temptation in the Garden of Eden. Satan used the Words of God (twisted, of course), but Eve was not quite as familiar with God’s Word as she should have been. When she responded to the temptation, she didn’t respond with accuracy to what God had really said. But Jesus is different. Jesus was saturated with Scripture. He knew it inside and out and He knew it’s purpose and intent. He understood the context. And every temptation that was thrown at Him, He responded with Scripture. He didn’t respond with His feelings. He didn’t respond with a quote from the latest scientific journal article. He didn’t pull from his memory bank what he last read in Psychology Today about human self-esteem as he processed through Satan’s temptation for self-glory in throwing himself off the temple to be rescued by angels in front of crowds of people. No...Jesus turned to Scripture alone. He was Sola Scriptura because He understood better than anyone the value of Scripture, the authenticity of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the purpose of Scripture...He understood Scripture to point us directly to God Himself...revealing His character. Revealing His authority over us. Revealing His right to rule us. Revealing His holiness. And it is because He submitted to the authority of Scripture and didn’t twist it for his own personal gain, that He defeated Satan.
Two things we can take away from this. Complete and utter thankfulness for our incredible Savior, Jesus, who suffered temptation so that he could be our sympathetic high priest. Be thankful that He was successful where we fail. Because He submitted His appetites, His desire for power and for glory before the cross, under the authority of God, we are the benefactors of that. His defeat of Satan, if we are in Christ, is credited to us as righteousness. So, even though we fail these same tests, even though we fail to see through twisted Scripture, because Jesus succeeded...it as if we succeeded too. That’s pretty incredible!
In light of that, we can now begin to respond like Jesus. We can learn that because He valued Scripture, so should we. We can learn that because He knew and understood Scripture, we should seek to know and understand it too. We can learn that because He submitted to the authority of Scripture in His life, we can too.
Just a heads up…if you hear someone quoting Scripture in such a way that is man-centered and humankind is being glorified...it’s twisted. If you hear someone quoting Scripture in defense of sin...it’s twisted. Why does twisted Scripture work so well on us? Because again, at our heart level, we don’t want to submit to the lordship of Christ. We don’t want an authority over us that tells us how to live our lives, so we twist it, or we listen to teachers who twist Scripture into something that allows us to maintain control over our lives. Twisted Scripture won’t draw us to repentance. It won’t identify us as sinners. It promises us glory and power. It promises us prosperity. It promises us instead that “we will be like God.” A much different message than what Scripture truly teaches.
Scripture reveals to us a holy God who is our Creator, Sustainer and Sovereign Lord. It reveals to us a humanity that is not basically good and in need of a little self-help or power of positive thinking, but instead is hopelessly and helplessly sinful in deep rebellion against God. And finally it reveals to us God’s magnificent plan to call a people, to redeem them by the precious blood of Jesus, to pardon them from their rebellion, to reconcile them to God, and to restore His Kingdom Lordship over their lives.
Post a Comment