Now, Jesus did not leave us defenseless in the use of the sword. Turn with me, please, back to Matthew. We will look in chapter 4, verse 1. Here, Jesus is showing us that there are three areas in which we will be attacked by these spiritual terrorists.
Now the word tempt has a dual meaning. One, it means to test; to search out; to try; or to put to the proof. Two, it means to entice; to commit evil. Now to entice to commit evil means to deceive or lure someone into going contrary to God's way, breaking His laws. God will never entice us to sin, but Satan and his host of spiritual terrorists will, because they are evil within.
These examples were written for us. This is not the entire battle between Satan and Jesus. If you put the gospels together, you would see that the battle actually began when Jesus on the first day was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit.
Paul truly understood, brethren, the bottom line regarding coveting, as did Jesus Christ. This is the bottom line, and I hope that you find it interesting.
It shows that he was tempted more than once.
One could read this and come to the conclusion that Satan was tempting Jesus to become filled with pride and to show He was the Son of God, or to covet having all the world right now rather than waiting thousands of years. Jesus saw right through all of this to the true reason of Satan's questions - that Satan, through all his temptations, was asking Jesus Christ to obey him - and Jesus responded accordingly. Brethren, that is exactly what Satan is doing with us in his laying all the traps and enticements that produce coveting in us that he might pull us into his world. In short, he is asking you and me to obey him and, I might add, in doing so, to worship him.
Turn over to Matthew 4. This is the tempting of Jesus Christ. With this, we can see how He handled these things. Jesus was to be tempted by Satan. And, just as His nature was being tested to see if He could be drawn away from His Father's truth (His Father's way of living) by being tempted with evil, so we too are being tested and tempted in the same way. It should encourage you to think about that.
The devil is the Adversary, being full of subtlety. In Ephesians 6, he is referred to as wily - setting traps. He is full of envy and hatred. And this is the one who is doing the tempting.
