William Barclay, in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke (1975:42-44), records three temptations that pastors face which are parallel to the three temptations of Jesus. Pastors are tempted:

1. To bribe people with meeting their physical needs.
2. To compromise for pragmatism – the end justifies the means.
3. To give people sensations and shows.

I agree that all three are temptations in pastoral ministry, and many churches and pastors around the world have succumbed to such temptations.

I would however, slightly change the first. Jesus wasn’t tempted to make bread for others, but for Himself. It was a temptation to meet His own physical needs. Pastors face this temptation all the time. How many of us have heard this whispered in our ear: “Your private life doesn’t matter. Image is everything. Do what you want behind closed doors. Nobody is going to see.  What you do in private does not effect who you are in public.”

Or, we assert our personal rights: “I have a right to eat and take care of myself. I prove my manhood by my rights. As a leader, I have rights to certain privileges, a certain salary, a certain level of respect.” Such things are not wrong; but they are not rights either.

So those are some of the temptations that pastors face. The way we combat them is by recognizing that as followers of Jesus, we have no rights. He surrendured His rights, and in following Him, we surrender ours as well.

This post was based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he offered shortcuts. He pointed out a fast track to accomplishing God’s will, an easy shortcut around the cross. Satan loves to offers shortcuts. He always says, “Hey, here’s what God has promised to give to you, but God’s ways take too long and require too much effort. I can give these things to you right now if you will just worship me.” Satan is the king of instant gratification. He was the one who first came up with the slogan, “Your way, right away.” And the trick to his temptations of this sort is that he always offers us God’s promises, but with a shortcut.

Remember Abraham? What was his temptation? “Abraham, God said that you would have a son. But you haven’t had one yet, so just go and sleep with your wife’s maidservant Hagar. That will give you a son.” And Abraham did it, and we are still feeling the consequences of that choice.

Then there was David. “David, God promised that you would be king. And here is Saul, asleep in this cave. Go ahead and kill him, then you can be king. He does deserve to die, you know.” But David did not do this, and became one of Israel’s greatest kings.

As you read through the Bible, watch for these sorts of situations. God promises something to someone, and only a few verses or only a chapter or two later, that person will discover an opportunity for a shortcut. They are offered the thing that God promised, but in order to get it, they have to break a command of God. They may have to lie, cheat, or kill, but they get what God promised them, and so they justify their actions in order to “obtain the will of God.” Generally, obtaining God’s goals by breaking God’s will ends in disaster.

Accomplishing God’s will must be done in God’s time and according to God’s ways. Any other method does not truly lead to the result God intends.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

According to the Bible, the spiritual forces arrayed against Christians are staggering. The pressures to sin that we face can sometimes seem overwhelming. These principalities and powers, these Satanic influences, these fallen angels and demons are ready to crush us, to overpower us, to try to get us to cave in to the pressure.

That is why we should never point the finger at somebody else and say, “They are so weak. How can they struggle with that? How could they have fallen to that temptation?”

F.B. Meyer once said that when we see a brother or sister in sin, we should not look down on them, because there are two things we do not know: First, we do not know how hard he or she tried not to sin. And second, we do not know the power of the forces and the spiritual pressure that assailed him or her.

I might add to that a third reason (which Jesus talks about in Luke 6). Condemning sin in others is often just a way of avoiding the sin in our own lives. So if we are always pointing out the sin of others, it may well be that we have our own secret sins we don’t want to deal with. So be careful about the sin you judge in others. It may just be your own reflection staring back at you.

Remember what you learned in Kindergarten: Whenever you point a finger at someone else, there are always three fingers pointing back at you.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

Lots of people wonder if Jesus could have sinned when He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The most common theological answer is that while Jesus could have sinned in His humanity, He could not have sinned in His deity. I have heard it illustrated that the deity of Jesus is like a iron bar, and the humanity of Jesus is like a thin wire wrapped around the bar. The wire, or humanity of Jesus, could be bent to sin, but for that to happen, the iron bar of His deity would have to bend, which is impossible.

It’s a nice analogy, but it really doesn’t make me feel that Jesus has experienced temptation the same way I have. I don’t have that iron bar holding me straight. And my wire of humanity feels more like dental floss.

So let’s step back and look at all this a different way.

First, as believers we do (in a sense) have the iron bar of deity holding us straight. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. In other words, we are encased in Christ. So, just like Jesus, the part of us that is “of God” cannot sin (this is what 1 John 3:9 is talking about). And yet, we do sin, because unlike Jesus, we have the sin nature.

And this, I think, really helps us understand the temptation Jesus went through versus the temptation we go through. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was tempted in all ways, just as we are, yet without sin. We often believe this means that He was tempted, but didn’t sin. While this is true, one of my professors at seminary taught that Hebrews 4:15 means that Jesus was tempted in every way we are except one – He wasn’t tempted from the sin nature, because He didn’t have one. In other words, we could loosely translate this verse this way: “Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, but not from the sin nature.”

Why is this important? Because it means that the temptation Jesus went through was way more difficult and trying than any temptation we might experience. We tend to think Jesus had it easy, while our temptations are so severe. But it is really the other way around. The pressure to sin that Jesus faced would crush any one of us.

Let me explain. How much temptation does it take for you to sin? For most of us, it doesn’t take much at all. We have a sinful flesh that will lead us off into temptation every chance it gets. And so Satan doesn’t have to come and tempt us, or even send some of His minions to do the job. Our flesh causes us to sin at the drop of hat, and so he doesn’t have to expend any energy tempting us.

Probably not a single one of us will ever, in our entire lives, be directly tempted by Satan himself. He is not like God who can be everywhere at once. He can only be in once place at one time, and with over six billion people on the planet, he probably has more important things to take care of than tempting you or me to cheat on our taxes or watch that dirty movie. Our flesh easily leads us off into those temptations all by itself; no push from Satan is required.

But while Jesus was fully human, He did not have “sinful flesh.” So the devil had to focus all his energy and skill directly at Jesus. Both knew that life and death and the ownership of the heavens hung in the balance. Not a single one of us will ever face the magnitude of temptation and the cunning power of the devil that Jesus faced for 40 days in the wilderness. 

So don’t ever think that your temptation is more severe than what Jesus faced. He has faced down the devil. Most of us have probably never been tempted directly by the devil. And yet every single one of us constantly have the presence of Christ with us and in us, helping us stand in the temptations we face.

Jesus is an iron bar to wrap your frail wire of humanity around. Then you, and Christ in you, will be unbendable, unbreakable, able to withstand the wiles of the devil.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.