Handling Temptation Like Jesus

Scott McFarland
06/30/19 - Sun AM Worship

Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus Was a Man…

Sometimes, I’m not sure exactly how we view Jesus: God, man, or a some weird combo of both.  It’s really hard not to think of Jesus as more of one (God or man) than he is of the other. Most of us have an overly human or overly divine perception of Jesus, which is why it’s hard to understand verses like Hebrews 4:15—“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  Most of us look at that passage and think, “Wow, Jesus had so much God in him that he was able to be completely sinless his whole life. I’m just human, so I’ll never be able to do that.” In some ways that’s accurate and in other ways it isn’t. We should never minimize Jesus’ temptation just because he was divine. He was human also…he could have slipped up and sinned. He had the capacity to sin, as a human being.  His divinity didn’t exclude him from temptation and sin. Otherwise, why would Satan have bothered to tempt him?  

If we believe that Jesus was tempted “as we are” and didn’t sin, we should probably pay attention to how he dealt with sin!  This morning, we’ll look at Matthew 4 and Jesus’ time in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. What did he do that was successful?  Is there something here we can learn? Join us for the next lesson in our “How Do I Deal with Temptation” series: “Handling Temptation Like Jesus.”

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