Reading Challenge: Tempted and Tried

I originally was going to do a section on each chapter from Russell Moore’s book, Tempted and Tried, that deals with the temptations of Jesus, but this would be a long post if I went into all that and what I learned from them, so here are a couple thoughts and takeaways from the first temptation (Chapter 3, “Starving to Death”) and also a powerful section I want to quote from Chapter 4, “Free Falling”.

With that said, commence post:

Reading Challenge: Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ by Russell Moore

Temptation is scary. When temptation comes, it’s so hard to look the other way and reject the promise of immediate satisfaction. Not one of us has lived very long in this life without being tempted by some kind of lust, desire, or craving.

Our temptations are powerful. Not a single one of us has ever overcome the power of temptation completely, except One.

Russell Moore’s book, Tempted and Tried, focuses on the temptation of Christ in the desert. Moore dedicates a chapter to each temptation brought against the Lord of Glory. He brings into view the struggles and rebellions of the people of Israel in the wilderness after they have been rescued from the land of Egypt, then compares them to the temptations that Jesus Christ faced, and defeated, in the desert.

No Temptation is Uncommon

That’s one thing I loved about this book. Moore shows that all the temptations that the Israelites faced, and that we have faced, are common. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13). We have all faced the same, similar temptations. And Christ has faced them with us. Only, where we completely failed and fell for the temptation, Christ conquered the tempter, and defeated the temptation that was thrown against Him.

Jesus goes out into the wilderness and faces the king of the tempters, Satan himself. Satan strikes at Jesus’ appetite. Jesus has been out in the wilderness for forty days and nights. He, as a human, is starving. He’s “hunger[ing] with us, and for us” (95). “If you are the Son of God”, Satan says, “Command these stones to becomes loaves of bread”. He’s challenging Jesus “to provide for himself, to feed himself, or, rather, to use the power of the Spirit to feed himself. It is the pull to consumption, to self-provision” (63). And that’s one of the temptations that Satan brings to us Every. Single. Day.

Every day we are tempted to think we can do it on our own. Every day we are tempted to serve ourselves and not wait on the Father to provide for us. We all have appetites for many different things, but will we deny our desires, will we put to death the desires of the flesh (Col. 3:5) and wait on the Lord? “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it” (Ps. 37:4-5). He cares for His children.

He Endured the Cross

Jesus was tempted all the way to the end of His life. He was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). This brings me to the quote from Tempted and Tried that I’d like to finish out this post. This section was so powerful to me, and I have to quote the whole section. Russell Moore can write! Satan tempted Christ, but so did we. We called out to Him, telling Him to “now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe”. But He didn’t … “for the joy set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Here’s Russell Moore on what Christ went through on the cross and in the tomb:

Part of the curse Jesus would bear for us on Golgotha was the taunting and testing by God’s enemies. As he drowned in his own blood, the spectators yelled words quite similar to those of Satan in the desert: “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mark 15:32). But he didn’t jump down. He didn’t ascend to the skies. He just writhed there. And, after it all, the bloated corpse of Jesus hit the ground as he was pulled off the stake, spattering warm blood and water on the faces of the crowd.

That night the religious leaders probably read Deuteronomy 21 to their families, warning them about the curse of God on those who are “hanged on a tree.” Fathers probably told their sons, “Watch out that you don’t ever wind up like him.” Those Roman soldiers probably went home and washed the blood of Jesus from under their fingernails and played with their children in front of the fire before dozing off. This was just one more insurrectionist they had pulled off a cross, one in a line of them dotting the roadside. And this one (what was his name? Joshua?) was just decaying meat now, no threat to the empire at all.

That corpse of Jesus just lay there in the silences of that cave. By all appearances it had been tested and tried, and found wanting. If you’d been there to pull open his bruised eyelids, matted together with mottled blood, you would have looked into blank holes. If you’d lifted his arm, you would have felt no resistance. You would have heard only the thud as it hit the table when you let it go. You might have walked away from that morbid scene muttering to yourself, “The wages of sin is death.”

But sometime before dawn on a Sunday morning, a spike-torn hand twitched. A blood-crusted eyelid opened. The breath of God came blowing into that cave, and a new creation flashed into reality. God was not simply delivering Jesus–and with him all of us–from death, he was also vindicating him–and with him all of us. By resurrecting Jesus from the dead, God was reaffirming what he had said over the Jordan waters. He was declaring Jesus “to be the Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4). This was done, that Scripture says, by “the Spirit of holiness.” This is the same Spirit who rested on Jesus at his baptism “like a dove” (Matt. 3:16). As this dovish Spirit alighted on him in the water and the tomb, could Jesus have thought of the words of the Psalm the Devil would quote in the wilderness: “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge” (Ps. 91:4)? With that kind of rescue, who needs to be proven right in any other way?

(Moore, 124-125)

Our Example

            This is our example. Jesus is the One whom we look to when we are tempted by our lusts and desires. We look to the One who was tempted and tried as we are, even to His death. We look to Him because He rose again on the third day, and because He raised us up with Him (Eph. 2:6). We look to Him because He conquered every temptation.

            I highly recommend this book. I believe it will help you grow in your spiritual life, and that it will help you to more clearly see Jesus, and His taking upon Himself our temptations and trials. He conquered for you. He knows exactly what temptations we are up against, because He was tempted and tried!