PAUL TRIPP MINISTRIES, INC. Substitutionary Temptation January 17, 2010 Mark 1:12-13 Perhaps it's humbling to admit, embarrassing at points, but all of us still carry around with us a susceptibility to temptation. You were susceptible this week. You are susceptible to different things than I may be susceptible to. But we re all susceptible to temptation in some location, some situation, some relationship. And because of that, this passage that we re going to look at, however brief, is a particular comfort. Let me read the verses again from Mark, chapter 1, verses 12 and 13: The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. (ESV) Mark is very careful to record that Christ faced and defeated Satan in three ways throughout His life: First, in this moment where Christ is driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness and is tempted by Satan defeats Satan in that moment. Christ faced him again in His public ministry and demonstrates His power over evil there. And Christ faced him again at the cross, making a public spectacle of him, triumphing over him by the cross. And Mark reminds us that everything Christ did in his life was done for us. From day one, it all was the substitution; it all was Christ in our place, Christ facing what we would not be able to face, Christ winning a victory that we could not win. Look at the words here now: The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. Christ wasn t in the wilderness because of some kind of preemptive attack by Satan. He wasn't there because He was lured there by the evil one. Mark is very careful to remind us that it was the Spirit of God that led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted. Now here's what that means. This was part of the redemptive script. This was part of God's plan. This was a necessary step in what Christ came to do. This isn t a diversion. This isn t an interruption. This is not a dangerous moment and you wonder what's going to happen. This is God doing exactly what He meant to do, to lead Christ to face the enemy on our behalf. Now here's the story. The first Adam was our representative. The first Adam stood where we would stand, and the first Adam faced the evil lies of the tempter; and he believed those lies, and he stepped outside of God's boundaries, disobeyed God's rules.
He opted for autonomy and self-sufficiency; he opted for the possibility that maybe I could live independent of God; maybe as I talked about this morning, I could find life outside of God. And Romans says, As Adam died, all died. With that horrible choice of Adam, sin entered the world, and all of us are born in sin, and all of us have that susceptibility to temptation; all of us desire autonomy; all of us desire self-sufficiency; all of us want the position of God. We re all like Adam. And so what s necessary is that God would send Jesus as the second Adam. Jesus now faces the same tempter, and He's doing that for us. I entitled this sermon Substitutionary Temptation because that's exactly what it is. This is Jesus as our substitute. And it was very, very important that before Christ faced His public ministry, that He would first face the enemy of that ministry. Matthew says, If you re going to enter the house of a strong man and take his stuff, you have to first bind him up. And so Christ faced the enemy, and He demonstrates His power; He does that for us so that we would, in His sacrifice, have that same power to say, No! to temptation. Not because we have that power in ourselves, but because we find that power in Him. He comes not only to forgive us, but to empower us by His grace; so that by that grace, we can say, No! And so that grace is operating on our behalf in this moment. This is not an interruption of the plan; this is part of the plan. The Spirit sends Christ out into the wilderness. Look at the words there; they are all very precise. The Spirit immediately drove him out in the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. I don't know if you noticed this, but you should; you should notice the obvious reference, the obvious allusion that Mark is making to Israel and Israel's time in the wilderness. Think about the people of God in the wilderness. It really is pretty shocking because they've experienced marvelous redemption. Think of the glory display that happened in Egypt as God is delivering His people. You would think that in the heart of every Israelite, there would be this thought, This is God and God alone, and we will serve him without question forever! You would think. But it doesn't take very long. Look if you would, with me, you have to get out a church Bible to do this, to Exodus 32, because it's shocking what happens here. God, as an act of grace, having redeemed his people from Egypt, is now going to give them His law. That giving of the law is itself a grace. Notice the account here:
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. (Exodus 32: 1-2, ESV) What's the issue? What's the issue that leads to this outrageous idolatry? Schedule! Moses is gone longer than they think he should be gone; they say, We don't know what's happened to him. And so what's the obvious next step? Let's make gods for us. I mean, that's how powerful our temptation to idolatry is! It doesn't take much for our hearts to run after a God-replacement. That's why we're so susceptible to temptation. Own the fact that that heart is in you. Do you know what the New Testament says? These things were written for our example and our instruction so that we would not fall as these people have fallen. (1 st Corinthians 10:11-12) These are people just like us. Now think of Aaron. Aaron is one of God's leaders. You would think Aaron would say, Never! There is one true God, Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who led us out of Egypt! I will not do this thing? What does Aaron say? Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in the ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, (Listen to this!) These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt! (Exodus 32:2-4) How outrageous! We do the same. We attribute to our idols what only could've been done by God. When Moses comes down, the conversation is amazing. You think, at that point as he approaches Aaron, that Aaron would be honest. Aaron says, This is not my fault. This amazing thing happened. I threw that gold in the fire and out came this calf. How quickly we excuse our rebellion. How quickly we recast our idolatry! This is why we so desperately need Jesus to stand in our place, Jesus to win the victory for us because this heart is our heart. And so Jesus does stand for us as the second Adam, standing in our place. It's remarkable that the very place of Israel's rebellion is also the place of Christ s defeat of Satan. The wilderness that was a place of complaining and idolatry and rebellion, challenge of God again and again, becomes a place where the Son of God goes, representing us, and stands before the enemy, and wins our victory. Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him!
Listen, your hope is not in your knowledge. Your hope is not in your strength. Your hope is not in your wisdom. Your hope is not in your long years of walking with the Lord. Your hope is not in your knowledge of The Word. Your hope is the second Adam, Jesus, who has won the victory for you and empowers you to live in that victory! What beautiful words: And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. Mark has a very interesting way of characterizing these events. Mark is a very efficient Gospel. We have the whole temptation of Christ covered in very few words, two short verses, but it's interesting Mark's take on this. Notice what he says, And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. Now, most of us, I think, when we think of Christ being tempted, we don't think of the whole forty days being a temptation. We think the temptation of Christ was just these three moments, and surely those three moments took place. But Mark tends to go in this direction; rather than emphasizing the attack of the enemy on the Messiahship of Christ, Mark tends to emphasize the attack of the enemy on the humanity of Christ. Christ is driven out into the wilderness alone. He faces the direct attack of Satan there. He faces the danger of wild animals there. Here's the picture; Christ, for those forty days, is standing in our place, and He's receiving the full force of what it means to live in this fallen world. That's what it means when it says in Hebrews 4 that this one Has been tempted in every way like we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15) That in this moment in the wilderness, that full range of what it means to face the harsh realities of life in a fallen world, all the aloneness and all the alienation and all the direct temptations of the enemy and all the dangers of a world that is broken, Christ is shouldering for us. It's not just a couple moments of temptation; it's forty days where Christ is in our place defeating the enemy on our behalf. And then it says, And the angels were ministering to Him. God honors the obedience of the Son, and He sends His messengers to bring aid and comfort to the Lamb. Now I don't know as I walked through that passage if you got the full import of what is going on here, but let me say it this way: at this moment as Christ is in the wilderness, all the hopes of humanity are resting on Christ s shoulders; because if Christ gives in, if He succumbs to temptation even for a moment, if He succumbs in thought or desire or word or action for just one second in those forty days, our hope of redemption is over because then He cannot go to the cross as the perfect Lamb of God!
And so there is no acceptable sacrifice, and so there is no such thing as redemption and forgiveness; there is no defeat of sin; there is no power over sin; there is no hope of eternity; the whole thing crashes to the ground! It's amazing how briefly Mark comments on the majesty and significance and importance of this event. It must be the pure, unspotted Lamb of God without sin who goes to the cross. And He's demonstrating, in this moment, that there's nothing that Satan is going to be able to throw at Him that s going to cause Him to turn from the Father s will; there's hope for us; we will be redeemed! So how are you doing with temptation? Do you act like you have no power? Do you give in to things that you should see coming? Do you give yourself to arguments that make wrong look right, trying to recast what you have done to make it more acceptable to your conscience? Do you live naïvely? Do you live proudly falling into believing that you're not susceptible in ways that you actually are? This passage is for you because the Redeemer has come. He has faced temptation for you. In Him, there is forgiveness; but in Him, there's even more; there's power to say, No! Are you availing yourself of that power? Are you living in that power? Are you living in the grace of the second Adam? In those moments when you're being mistreated, and in those moments when the lure of evil is so strong in you, in those moments when your eyes see things and your heart begins to move toward those things, in moments when your thoughts begin to run away, in moments of jealousy or anger or doubt--do you rise and say, My Messiah has defeated the enemy on my behalf, and I will stand and say, No! and go in another direction? Jesus bore the full force of the sin and temptation of a fallen world so that we would have forgiveness, and we would have power. May we live in that forgiveness, and may we exercise that power! Let s Pray: Thank you, Lord, for the reality that everything You did, every situation You were in, every location, every circumstance, every relationship, every word, every thought, every action, every desire, was lived for us--it was all an amazing, gracious substitution. You came and stood as the second Adam, our representative; and this time, the result was not a massive failure that brought darkness and defeat and hopelessness and danger to our world. This time as a second Adam, You faced the foe; You defeated him; You remained true to Your Fathers calling. And You did all of that so that we would have mercy and grace in our time of need. Lord, may we live in that power; may we celebrate Your victory, not just with hymns and not just with theology, but with the way that we live our lives, may our lives be lived as a celebration of the victory that can only be found in the second Adam, the Lord Jesus
Christ! May we live that victory in specific situations and relationships where we refuse to give way to temptation. We say, No! and we turn and we move in another direction. We recognize that we too have rebellious, fickle, and idolatrous hearts like Israel in the wilderness. We too would've questioned Your goodness. We too would've complained against You. We too would've rebelled against Your way. We too would have given our hearts to idolatry. Because of that, we need the rescue of Your victory that we may stand in strength and obedience. May we do that by Your grace. In Jesus s name, Amen. 2010 Paul Tripp Ministries www.paultripp.com