A few weeks ago I was asked to preach at a mainline Protestant church. I happily accepted the invitation. The Sunday I was to preach was the first Sunday of Lent. In view of this I thought I would find out what biblical texts were typically preached on that day. I did a quick search on line and found out that one text which was preached on the first Sunday of Lent was the passage about Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I imagine that this passage was considered a good text for Lent because it mentions 40 days.

I decided that I would preach about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. There are three accounts of it in the gospels (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13), I chose to preach from Matthew’s account of it (Matt. 4:1-11). This is a well-known text. The devil came to Jesus in the wilderness when He was by Himself, living among the wild animals (Mark 1:13). Here Jesus was tested with three temptations. Stated differently the devil came to Jesus when He was very vulnerable. First, the enemy tried to get Jesus to change stones into bread (Matt. 4:3). This must have been a very appealing temptation because Jesus had been fasting (Matt. 4:2). Jesus did not do what the devil told Him to do, instead He answered with Scripture (Matt. 4:4). Second, the devil tried to get Jesus to throw Himself down from the Temple (Matt. 4:6), he even cited Scripture, probably to encourage Jesus to comply with his wishes. After all, if Scripture says something it should be obeyed, right? Again Jesus responded with Scripture (Matt. 4:7). And lastly, the devil offered to give Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would worship him (Matt. 4:8-9). This was a very bold temptation. A created being, the devil, asked the creator, Jesus (John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2), to worship him. How absurd! Once again Jesus responded with Scripture (Matt. 4:10). All of the Scriptures that Jesus used to counter the devil’s temptations came from the book of Deuteronomy, He responded to the first temptation with Deuteronomy 8:3, the second with 6:16, and the third with 6:13.

In the course of preparing and preaching this sermon I became aware of something: All of the Scripture verses that Jesus cited were written hundreds of years earlier. They all came from the time of Moses, who was the author of Deuteronomy (Matt. 19:7; Deut. 24:1-4). This, in itself, is not a great revelation. However, Jesus’ responses to the devil in the wilderness show us that Jesus believed that what was written in the Old Testament was relevant to His life. He used the Scriptures from the book of Deuteronomy and applied them to the circumstances He found Himself in at that time. Please note that the verses which He cited were not Messianic prophecies, that is, they were not texts which gave a bit of information about the promised Messiah.

I think that Jesus’ use of these texts from Deuteronomy is significant. One of the objections that people today sometimes offer about the Bible is that it is an old book. It was written in times and cultures that are different from our own. These things are true. And so some people reason that the Bible is no longer relevant to us today. It is true that there are some portions of Scripture that we no longer practice, such as the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament Law, but there are good biblical reasons for that. However, the moral, Scriptural imperatives remain and we are to obey them. In the temptations of Jesus He shows us the fallacy of seeing Scripture as antiquated and no longer relevant to us. Jesus saw these Old Testament texts from Deuteronomy as still authoritative in His time (which was many years after the texts were written) and He was determined to live by them. The age of God’s Word does not dilute its authority over us. God’s Word is relevant to our contemporary world, it is truth (John 17:17). To everyone who will accept it principles the Bible supplies sound teaching that can positively impact both a person’s beliefs and behavior. The Bible is also the believer’s weapon (Eph. 6:17) when we, like Jesus, are involved in spiritual conflict.

John P. Lathrop is a graduate of Zion Bible Institute and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is an ordained minister with the International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies. He has written articles and book reviews for a number of publications including: the Pneuma Review, the Africanus Journal of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Christian Trends Magazine, in India, and  Berita Mujizat and Jurnal Jaffray, both in Indonesia. He is also the author of four books.