Get ready to start a journey…a journey through the pages of the Bible and the pages of your life.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Satan says. “And it’s the right time to do it.” God’s timing, his destination, and the way to get to the destination are always perfect, but Satan wants us to work in his time frame, follow his path, and get to his desired destination. His way always involves a shortcut from the road of obedience. That was the essence of the third temptation in the desert.
Satan seldom shows up as the fiery demon that scares us to death. He is more subtle and craftier in his art of temptation. He puts before us what we want, addresses our purpose in life, and then promises a shortcut if we follow his lead.
Satan attacks us at our weakest moments. He finds us when we are drained, exhausted, and alone. His temptations often come in the form of a remedy to satisfy our immediate needs. That’s where Satan began his temptations with Jesus in the desert.
Satan attacks us in our times of strength and in our times of weakness. He came aggressively after Adam and Eve in the garden during a period of perfect communion with God. He did the same with Jesus in the desert when he was physically vulnerable. Today, let’s compare the garden and desert temptations. I will borrow from the excellent work of William Cook and Chuck Lawless to make these comparisons.
Satan is not particular about when he attacks. He went after Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. At their strongest point, he convinced them that God was holding out. He also attacks us in our weakest moments. That’s what he did when he tempted Jesus in the desert.
God’s grace is amazing! He gives us what we don’t deserve. He offers the free gift of grace without conditions or strings attached. And it all started with his grace in the garden.
Temptation appeals to our senses—our spiritual, emotional, and physical senses. That was the lure for Eve in the garden, and we have followed the pattern ever since.
Does God really love me? Is this the best God has for me? Why is God holding out on me? These questions, which have echoed through the ages, started in the garden when Satan showed up to bring down Adam and Eve. After Satan told Eve that God’s Word was not true, he moved to God’s motive.
When there is an opening in our battle gear, the enemy aims for that vulnerable spot. After Eve’s weak response to Satan’s question, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1), he went from a seemingly innocent question to an attack on God’s integrity.
A small error makes a big difference. Check this out. If you started walking on a straight path toward a destination and were one degree off course when you started, after one hundred yards, you would end up 5.2 feet from your destination. Not that big of a deal, right? However, in that same scenario, you’d be off by 92.2 feet after a mile. If you were driving in a straight line from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and started just one degree off, you’d miss the nation’s capital by 42.6 miles. One more…in a rocket going to the moon, one degree off at blastoff would cause you to miss the moon by 4,169 miles. A small error makes a big difference. We see that in the first temptation.
In the beginning, “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). Then God created the heavens and the earth. God’s crowning creation was man and woman, made in his own image. God placed this sinless couple in a perfect environment, the garden of Eden. They had everything they could ever want or need. There was, however, one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from which they were not allowed to eat. God’s instruction regarding the tree was to allow his creation to obey him or not. The first sin centered around the tree.
What causes us to sin? Is it our environment? Does it have to do with our family of origin? Is it in our genes? Let’s consider these questions as we look at our passage today.