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.