GOD’S LIMITS ON TEMPTATION

by Ivan Maddox

West End Bible Fellowship

Atlanta, GA

To fully appreciate what Jesus Christ went through when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, we need to understand that the devil is not allowed to do anything and everything he wants to against God’s people. God has placed certain limits on Satan in his dealings with God’s people. There are also certain limits on Satan that have to do with who and what he is.

Satan is an angel, or, more exactly, a cherub.

This means that Satan is not at all in the same class as God. He is not God’s adversary; he is ours. He poses no threat at all to God; but even though he has already been defeated by Jesus Christ on our behalf, he poses a serious threat to us by attacking our confidence and trust in God, and our obedience to God.

Because Satan is an angel, he exists moment by moment, like we do. He does not know the future, like God does. He must guess and calculate; and he makes mistakes.

Because he is an angel, Satan does not know our thoughts. However, he has had thousands of years of practice reading human beings, and he’s very good at it.

Because he is an angel, Satan can only be at one place at one time. However, he has numerous evil angels under his command, and thus is able to make his presence felt in countless places at once.

One major limit that Satan must work under is found in the first chapter of Job.

In this record, Satan comes into the presence of God and, when asked where he has been, he responds that he has been "going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." This statement should call to mind Peter’s warning about our adversary.

1 Peter 5:8.
5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Satan’s purpose in going to and fro in the earth is to seek whom he may devour. However, in this record in Job, something happened between Satan’s going about and his attempting to devour. He stopped what he was doing and went to God’s throne room to talk with God. Their conversation was about the man Satan wanted to attack: Job. In that conversation, God permitted Satan to attack Job, but set limits in advance on what Satan could do. Within those limits, Satan showed himself to be absolutely ruthless; but he never stepped so much as a toenail over the line drawn by God.

When it came to attacking Job’s servants or Job’s children, though, Satan did not take time out to talk with God. He did whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. From this it appears that he has a much more free hand against those who do not belong to God.

But it is in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian church that we see most clearly the limits set by God on Satan in his war against the saints of God.

10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God [is] faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear [it].

I Corinthians is written to men and women who are born of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This verse lays out for those who are born again the rules of engagement under which our adversary, the devil, is required to wage his war against us. What does this verse mean? Let’s take a closer look at it.

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man…" This means that Satan is only allowed to use HUMAN temptations, temptations normal to human beings, in his attacks against us. This may not seem very important at first glance; after all, aren’t ALL temptations human ones?

But our adversary is a superhuman being, and he is not inherently limited to human methods in his dealings with man. What havoc could he wreak in our lives if he were allowed to use superhuman methods in his war against us?

In his attack on Jesus during the temptations, we get a taste of what that would mean. For in Satan’s attack on Jesus, his gloves came off. He was allowed to do things that he is normally not allowed to do against God’s people.

The temptation of Jesus was taking place in the wilderness, far south of Jerusalem. But the devil wanted to tempt Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem. So he TOOK him there. He physically picked Jesus up and moved him to the place where he wanted him to be in order to make his temptation effective. The temptation to jump off the pinnacle of the temple is not presented to us as a hallucination that Jesus had, nor did Jesus treat it like one. He dealt with it like something that was really happening to him.

Suppose the devil were allowed to pick you up and move you to where he wanted you to be, so that his temptation of you might have maximum effect. Suppose you’d had a weakness for alcohol, but you were successfully resisting it. Suppose the devil could take you, at will, against your will, into your favorite bar, into the company of all your former drinking buddies, to tempt you. How much harder would it be for you to stand? Or suppose you’d had a problem with sexual temptations, but were resisting it successfully. If the devil was allowed to take you into the bedroom of a person for whom you had a particular weakness, against your will, and there tempt you, how much more difficult would it be for your to stand for God?

This is the kind of superhuman temptation Jesus was required to stand up to, but that the devil is not permitted by God to use against us. They’re in his arsenal; they’re in his toolchest. He’s just not allowed to use them. Instead, he’s restricted to trying to catch you at the right place, at the right time, in the right set of circumstances; or to trying to influence you and others in order to set up the right set of situations and circumstances in order to tempt you.

But this is not the only kind of superhuman temptation Jesus had to face.

4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

Once again the devil physically moved Jesus in order to tempt him. But think for a moment: What mountain is there from which you can see "all the kingdoms of the world?" There is no mountain like that. The devil moved Jesus to a very high mountain in order to set the proper mood; but in order to complete the temptation, he gave Jesus a vision of all the kingdoms of the world — against Jesus’ will! — then used that vision as the basis for tempting him.

Suppose the devil were allowed to distort our sense of reality, or give us visions, forcing us to see the things he wanted us to see, and to hear the things that he wanted us to hear, in order to tempt us. How much harder would it be for us to stand for God?

It is possible for us to do certain things that make it possible for Satan to use superhuman weapons against us. If, for example, we engage in behavior forbidden by God’s word, such as consulting psychics, or playing with tarot cards, or consulting horoscopes, etc., we risk opening up lines of attack against ourselves that would not normally be available. But Satan is not allowed to use such weapons against us in the normal course of events. He is limited to using "human temptations" against us.

But that is not the end of God’s promises to us in I Corinthians 10:13.

Here we see a second limit under which Satan must operate in his war against us. This passage means that Satan is not allowed to use "college level" temptations against "elementary school" Christians. He is limited by God to tempting people at the level they are able to handle.

This passage is, in effect, a promise from God that no matter what temptations you are confronted with during your life, you will be able to overcome them with the word of God that you know or have available to you at the time of your temptation.

This is a serious limit indeed for our adversary. As one of the greatest of the angels, he is far wiser than any human being. However, instead of being able to run circles around us with his incredible wisdom, he is required instead to "dumb down" his attack to the point where we are able to see it for what it is, and deal with it accordingly, with the knowledge of the word of God that we have now.

This promise gives us a fighting chance against temptation, but it does not promise us automatic victory. There is work we must do if we are to successfully deal with Satan’s attacks against us. In Hebrews 5, the writer reproved his listeners for not having developed as well as they they should have in this area.

Even though a temptation may be within our ability to handle it, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be hidden, or that it won’t involve deception or subtle departures from the truth. It’s up to us to train ourselves to look at each situation through the lens of God’s word, so that we can properly discern what is good, and what is evil.

In this area, too, Jesus Christ was at the front of the battle. Because he was able to handle more, he could be tempted with more.

The temptation to command stones to be made bread was particularly insidious. Jesus had just finished a forty day fast. He was hungry. He could eat now. However, he was in the wilderness, where there was not immediate access to food. Going to the nearest grocery store or restaurant would require a walk of several miles.

It was in the midst of this dilemma that Jesus was presented with a solution: Command those stones over there to be made bread. Use the power of God to supply your needs. Take spiritual authority over the situation. Speak the solution into being.

We are told in the text that "the tempter" prompted him to do this. It’s a good thing we were told this. I’m not sure I would have recognized these words as a temptation to do evil if I hadn’t been told right up front that this was the case. After all, what’s wrong with relying on the power of God to supply your need when you find yourself in a tight spot?

Jesus was just beginning his ministry. He had just received the spirit of God. He had never before performed a miracle. Now, faced with the first crisis of his ministry, it is the devil who shows up, urging him to "walk in the power of God" to solve this problem.

But Jesus recognized this temptation for what it was. His response was quoted from Deuteronomy 8. In this chapter Moses, speaking by the spirit of God, explained to Israel that God had deliberately allowed them to go through hard times in order to see whether they would trust God or not. God was trying to teach them that the key to living was not getting your needs met, as exemplified by getting bread for your stomach, but obeying God. God drilled this lesson home to them by depriving them of their normal sources of sustinence, and requiring them to eat what He told them to eat it, when He told them to eat it.

Jesus’ answer to the tempter was, in effect, "I’ll eat what God tells me to eat, when God tells me to eat it."

Why was the tempter so anxious for Jesus to do a miracle? Had he carried out this injunction, would he have succeeded? And if he had, would he have done so by the power of God, or by some other power?

Jesus bypassed that whole set of problems by waiting on the counsel of God. We are not told how or when Jesus got his next meal. However, we are told that after the temptations were over, angels came and ministered to him (Matthew 4:11). I suspect that, like the angel who ministered to Elijah, these angels brought food with them. But whatever the case, Jesus waited on God’s solution rather than taking matters into his own (spiritual) hands.

There is a third limit on our adversary found in I Corinthians 10:13.

I Corinthians 10:13c.

…but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear [it].

In the game of chess, the object of the game is to get one’s opponent into a position where he or she is under attack, but unable to make a legal move in order to escape the attack. This is called a "checkmate."

Now imagine a chess game between a grandmaster, or a master chess player, and a novice, in which the grandmaster was not allowed to place the novice in a checkmate situation. This would significantly affect the way the game was played, and the outcome of the game. The grandmaster might run strategic circles around the novice, he might confuse him, he might frustrate him, he might tire him out, he might incite him to quit. The one thing he could not do, though, is force a win, because that would involve a checkmate. The problem, of course, is that forcing a checkmate is the object of the game.

The devil finds himself operating in a similar circumstance in his dealings with us. No matter how brilliantly he attacks us, God has already guaranteed us a legitimate, godly way out of the situation.

In short, Satan must wage his war with us hampered by a tight set of restrictions imposed by God Himself. He has weapons and strategies at his disposal that he is unable to bring to bear against us because of these restrictions.

But what about us? What restrictions do we operate under?

So long as we walk in obedience to God’s word, and so long as we walk in love, we are encouraged to "put on the whole armour of God," and make full use of everything God has equipped us with.