Ephesians Lesson 38 of 39 part 6

Matthew 4:1-3

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (tested) of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."
Why was Jesus sent to the wilderness? To be tempted. Being "led by the Holy Spirit", here is our ey, we are also to be so led. To drive the power of the Holy Spirit home within Him, He had to become dependent on Him, just as we are too. For the same reason we are delivered to Israel's first estate by God at our conversion, which is our Redemption. For the proofing of our redemption and the bring us to seeing the need for His salvation. From there we learn of Him and that is this is all about. We know the Lord could have done it, but He certainly was not going to do it at Satan’s bequest, so what does He do? He withstands him, He resists him, and look how He does it. This resisting is where I fail quite often, I listen to the voice of my flesh all to often. I desire Christ to be LORD, of my total being, as He is of my soul and newly awakened spirit.

Matthew 4:4

"But he answered and said, It is written, (He quotes Scripture) Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Did you catch that? Man is to live by God's Will or Word alone. Which by the way is the Law. Not the law as given Israel but God's Law, a Law which is most certainly different than the Law of through Moses. Alright now you come through these various temptations and every time, what does Jesus quote? The Scripture! That is our defense, do you see that? Coming back to the book of Ephesians, as we look at these verses in whole, there is not one word in here that we are to attack or do physical battle with Satan. The battle we are to wage is mental and spiritual, the submission of our all to God's kingdom rule within us. All of the attributes of this event are defensive, and that is all we can do. We can withstand him, James says, we can resist him, and he will flee from us. So here is where we have to have a knowledge of the Scriptures in order to confront Satan, not on our ground but rather on God's, if and when he approaches us. When we receive this Gospel, Satan cannot touch God or His children though he wages war all around us. Unless we allow him by way of vain imaginations, evil people, mans intelligence, mans Government, economies and world wars. The vain imaginations area is where I personally have my trouble, from from my mind and from within through the voice of the flesh which is deeply rooted from child-hood.

So we are to be prepared because he will attack at a moment, one time or another. You know, we don’t think we have to feel that he is constantly attacking us day in and day out. We told someone the other day, and it probably shocked them a little bit, that I have more trouble with my old sin nature than I do with Satan. Isn’t that right? It is our old sin nature (his secret tool) that gives us the most problems. Satan, I think, and this is problematic and periodic in his attacks on the believer. But our old Adamic nature is a 24 hour a day battle, because that is where we are in a constant warfare, and we are must vulnerable there. Though we strive for the keeping of the flesh under submission to God. We do fail.

Ephesians 6:12

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Paul covers a host of areas from which the adversary attacks us and we must know them and understand how they operate. In order to resist. Come back to Romans chapter 8, because the only way we can teach is to compare Scripture with Scripture, because it usually explains itself better than I can. Here Paul writes in the conclusion of this great chapter of Romans 8 about our security as a believer.