Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Matthew Chapter 4. I don't know if you heard about the little girl who was asked if she believed in the devil and she said, "Oh yes, and when the devil comes knocking at my heart's door, I send Jesus to answer the door." That was a wise little girl. She knew the greater was He that was in her than he that was in the world, and she sent Jesus to send him away.

Well, that's a child's concept, but it's not so far from what we'll be thinking about. For Christ can give us the words to send the devil away. He can give us the words to rebuke the devil. And as I have been heavily into this study this week, I have learned a lot of things. I needed to be reminded about all over again. I've learned some new things, and I'm excited about what I can give you perhaps to take away that will be tools to handle temptation, even as we see it lived out in the life of Jesus.

Flip Wilson theology says the devil made me do it. And I want to tell you, the devil cannot make you do anything. God won't make you do anything. He could if He wanted to, but He won't because He's given you free will. Which means that temptation is an environment daily that gives us choices. Temptation isn't only an opportunity to do evil. It's an opportunity to do good.

And Jesus wanted us to know that He was led of the Spirit, so the Scriptures say, into temptation, and He came out of that experience full of the Spirit. And God's idea is that temptation should be a testing ground to strengthen us because His idea is that we'll win. We'll win. We have absolutely no excuse, for Christ has overcome the devil, and He lends us in the power of the Holy Spirit all that we need to do the same.

So the devil cannot make you do it. God will not make you make the right choices, but He gives you the tools and the ability to overcome. Let's read some of this. Jesus was led by the Spirit. Notice the little word "then." This is linking the baptism. Immediately Jesus had come out of the waters, He went into the desert. The two things are part of one, just divided in our Bibles by a chapter heading.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to Him and said, "If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Jesus answered, "It's written man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." Then the devil took Him to the holy city, had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you're the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down."

For it is written, "He will command His angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." Jesus answered him, "It's also written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Well again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." And Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'" Then the devil left Him and angels came and attended Him.

This is one of the accounts of the temptation. You get one in Mark, you get one in Luke. But commentators have told us that the order of the temptations which varies is undoubtedly correct in Matthew, and that's why we will be taking the Matthew passage so we don't get a little bit confused. The order is different in the other things for different reasons. It depends who the gospel writers were writing for, and that's a little bit too complicated. We don't need to go into it. But this is the most straightforward chronological order of what happened to Jesus, so we will take this for our study today.

Now these accounts could only have come from Jesus Himself. Think about it. I mean, how have we got this in our Bible? Jesus obviously gathered His disciples around Him at one point and told them. And that's how we've got it here. There was no one else with Jesus apart from Satan, and he wasn't going to write a bit of the Bible for you. And so Jesus passed it on to the men that He was leaving behind for one good reason.

He dragged the devil out of the darkness into the light and He said to His followers, "Look at this guy. I've overcome him. I want you to know that. This is what happened to me. This is what I did on your behalf, and never think he can beat you." And so Jesus made sure the temptations were written here. Not just so we could see what happened to Him, but so we can have overwhelming confidence in the power of God and His authority when we meet temptation or we meet the devil face to face.

So the source is obviously the writers coming from Jesus Himself. The method of the temptation seems to be the devil brought flashes of scenes before His eyes. There was a voice of some sort. We don't know. It's not described to us. But there was a direct confrontation by the personality called the devil or Satan or that great serpent as he has many, many titles in the Bible, the arch-enemy of the human race, the arch-enemy of course of God Himself.

So the method seemed to be set in the framework of symbolic things the devil brought to Him, to His mind, to His imagination or suggestions that He brought. And it's not dissimilar to the way that the devil puts thoughts in our minds. He often does that and then you get all guilty for thinking this awful thought. Well, you need to realize the source of it. Sometimes it is your own thought, your own fleshly thoughts, but sometimes He just puts a thought into your mind and you think, "How could I think such an awful thing as that?"

Recognize where it's coming from. You're not; He's put it in your mind. And you cannot stop the birds flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair. And so we have to learn that Satan uses these methods even as He used them with Jesus. The place of course was the desert, the place that Israel was specifically tempted in the desert for those 40 years or tested.

And Jesus' answers all come from Scripture, from that part of the Bible, from Deuteronomy between six and eight when Israel was going through their worst temptations. Jesus takes Scriptures from there and applies them to meet the devil's temptation. And so what's happening is Israel was God's servant in the desert being tested. Israel, God's servant, failed the temptations and testing, if you remember. Now God's servant, the Son, is tested in another desert in another time in another age. This time, God's servant overcomes. So the place is the desert, a fitting place for this to happen.

And the chief opposer of God comes to Jesus. Now let's think a little bit about Satan today. I don't like to do this because I don't like to give him any attention, but if we can give him the attention that's needed in order for us to demythologize him a little bit and to get him in his right place, then that's what we need to do. The origins of Satan are interesting according to Scripture. According to Scripture in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, which are windows through which we can view Satan's activity, according to these two passages of Scripture, he was one of the highest-ranking angels.

Some think a cherub, a guardian of the glory of God. The cherubs had a special function. They were nearest the throne. They were the highest rank of angels, and Lucifer was probably the highest of the cherubs. He had very close proximity to God Himself and to the throne of God. And his fall is described in very picturesque language in Ezekiel 28. "You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone adorned you. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God. You walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God and I expelled you, oh guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor, so I threw you to the earth. I made a spectacle of you before kings." Now when I say that this was a window, that's what I mean. This is addressed, this piece of Scripture, as the one in Isaiah, to a king, an evil king.

But as Jeffrey Grogan says, "When Satan works his malign will through the rulers of this world, he reproduces his own wicked qualities in them so that they become virtual shadows of which he is the substance." And the language of the inspired writer of Scripture goes beyond what the King of Tyre is doing. And incidentally, in the Ezekiel passage, the King of Tyre is setting himself up as God to be worshipped. That's how the whole passage begins.

And as God begins to deal with this king and say what will happen to him because there is no God but Him and He won't have that happening, He won't share His glory with another, as God begins to, through the prophet Ezekiel, talk to him about this, the language goes beyond that and starts to talk about the one who is beyond the kings that set themselves up as God, Satan himself, who is inspiring them.

So at some point, Satan was thrown out of heaven. At some point, he allowed himself to become jealous of God and began this insatiable desire to be like God, to take His place and even to have God worship him instead of him worship God, which is reflected in the third temptation when Satan is throwing everything out the window that he's tried that hasn't worked, says, "Bow down and worship me." That's it. That's the heart of Satan. He doesn't even want you and me to worship him. He wants God to worship him. He wants to take His place. Satan never wanted to be Satan. Satan wants to be God.

And because he is so jealous of God, and the essence of jealousy is "I want what you've got and I don't want you to have it either, and I will deprive you of it at all means," then that's what he's about. He cannot stand it when God gets glory. He runs out of this sanctuary with his hands over his ears when we sing praises to God. He cannot bear it. And because he cannot take on God, for reasons I will tell you in a minute, it's no contest, he gets at God by getting at His children and depriving God of the glory that he cannot deprive God of in heaven. He tried and failed. He will try it on earth.

And so his job is to come around believers and stop us praising and worshipping God, tempt us into those places. It's a strange paradox, as Grogan says, that nothing makes a being less like God than the urge to be His equal. But listen, a created being cannot rise to a level higher than that which he was created by God. Did you get that? The Bible teaches three orders of beings: deity that stands alone, one uncreated creator.

Secondly, angels. And Satan is not the eternal equivalent of God. Get that. Satan is not the eternal equivalent of God. For a created being cannot rise to a level higher than that which he was created to be. So there is deity. So there are angels. So there are humans created according to Hebrews a little lower than the angels, but for glorification. Now that gets to Satan. For God has it in mind to take ordinary human beings, invest them with the Holy Spirit, justify them, sanctify them, take them home to heaven where they will never sin and glorify them above the angels.

And anybody that starts glorifying God gets to Satan for the reasons I've already said. So Satan belongs to an order of being called angels, not to the order of being called God. And you know that is one great confidence block that has helped me as I've studied this passage. It was a new thought to me in some ways. I mean, I've known it in other ways, but it gave me confidence to realize that.

And in Tim Warner's book, *Spiritual Darkness*, it's a great little book and you might want to look at that, but he has this little thing in here. He says angels, God's angels that didn't fall and follow Satan in his fall, are God's staff to run the world. Isn't that nice? They're there for guidance, protection, deliverance, discernment. They are ministering spirits sent for us, to us, guardian angels. We believe in it. It's scriptural. God uses His angels to carry out His purposes in the world.

Now when Lucifer, Son of the Morning, became Satan, Father of the Night, the angels he took with him became like disgruntled employees who wanted to get the boss. I think that is a great picture he brings to us. And yet God limits what those disgruntled employees, those demons and what Satan himself can do. He's like a great big wounded bear, dying and knowing it, ferocious. There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded-to-death animal. But he's on the end of a leash.

And it's our Jesus Christ who has that authority and power to keep him and to allow him only what in God's strange permitted will is allowed. Satan cannot take on God; there's no contest. God in Christ took him on and beat him. And Satan didn't chase Jesus around the wilderness and corner Him behind a rock and tempt Him. Jesus went looking for him into the desert and forced him onto the attack in order that He might overcome him once and for all.

And when you go through the Gospels after this, you see very little about Satan and demons, funnily enough. And when they appear, they're there. They left Jesus for a while. They came back here and there, and even in the Acts of the Apostles, with a word they're put in their place because the job has been done not only in the wilderness, but of course on the cross. This should give you confidence as you face the temptations that will come to you.

Now the whole duty of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and the whole one ambition and duty of Satan and his demons is to deprive God of having His rightful glory given to Him by human beings. So let's look at the temptations. The first one, what did Satan try? He came to Jesus knowing He was starving after 40 days and 40 nights, having fasted and prayed, preparing for the ministry that was ahead of Him.

And he said, "Why don't you, if you are the Son of God, look at those stones and use the powers that you have to satisfy your own needs?" He did not get Jesus to doubt the power He had to turn the stones into bread. Jesus had the power. He knew it; the devil knew it. But the devil knew that Jesus had voluntarily laid His powers down in obedience to God. Remember I've told you, He chose to be the second Adam, to be perfect man that never sinned, and to do it as Adam should have done it, not with miraculous powers but in obedience to God's principles.

And so He wouldn't do that. More important to Jesus than bread, even after 40 days of fasting, was being obedient. And God had not chosen to provide the food to satisfy Jesus in the desert at that point. Therefore, if God had not provided it for Him, He would not take it from any other source. Now the temptation was a very obvious one, but man is more than a fed animal, Jesus said. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

Man is more than a fed animal. And Satan often uses our God-given fleshly appetites for his own use, especially the sexual appetite for example. And he comes and he says as a human being you have the right to satisfy your own physical needs. Why would God have given you these physical needs if He didn't expect you to satisfy them? The fall of man. Satan has succeeded in part to get at his employer by getting at his children.

But we are more than a fed animal, Jesus says. Our physical appetites are very important, but they must never be all important or the most important thing. And the true source of man's strength lies in the word. It is written, it is written, it is written. Satan is always trying to lure us to any position outside the will of God, and Jesus rejects it and says, "I must remain in the sphere of divine government." Man is with God equal to all strain and superior to all temptation.

Little girl walked up to me in Menomonie. A lot of people came in from the outlying areas to some meetings I was having up there and she was a pastor's wife. And she had read my book years ago, *Prime Rib and Apple*, about all the ribs of the Bible, all the Old Testament ribs, the ladies, starting with Eve. And there's a chapter in there, "How to Commit Adultery When Your Husband's Out of Town." It's about Bathsheba.

And she said to me because in that I use the picture of being tempted by a King David who lives next door. What do you do when your husband's out of town? I just brought it down and applied it. And she read this years ago, little blonde, cute little thing, pastor's wife. She came bouncing up to me. She didn't even introduce herself. I was sitting there with my cup of coffee and she said, "King David has come to live next door." And I knew immediately what she meant.

And she stood there with her big blue eyes looking at me somewhat desperately. And in that passage I talk about King Lear coming to live next door. That's no problem if King Lear makes a pass at you, is it? The problem is when King David comes to live next door. And I said, "King Lear or King David?" And she said, "King David." I said, "How you doing with it?" Said, "Badly." She said, "What do I do?"

So we sat down and thought of some practical things that she could do to start and organize her life so that when she knows they are both alone, she isn't. Just some practical things, to share with one person, to be accountable, to get somebody praying about that. And then of course there's all the complication of what does she do about telling her husband, etc. But you see, she's being tempted like Jesus was tempted. And oh what joy it was to tell her: man with God is equal to all the strain and superior to all temptation.

For God overcame this. He knows; He's been there. Yes, it was a different appetite, but all appetites can be controlled as God would have them controlled. Remember the illustration I used with you about cookies? Do you ever get tempted to turn, instead of stones into bread, dough into cookies and eat them all? There you go. Maybe King David hasn't come to live next door to you, but maybe that's your temptation, right?

And the lady that said to me, "Every time I go to work I pass this cookie shop and I can smell 'em." I said, "How you doing with it?" She said, "Badly." I said, "How can you smell 'em in the car?" She said, "I put the windows down." I said, "Don't put the windows down." Oh she said, "That's a good idea." You know, don't walk flat into temptation and expect the Lord to deliver you from evil. Then she said, "I start and pray things like if there's a parking place outside, that'll mean God wants me to stop and buy some cookies."

And I said, "So what happens?" So she said, "Well, the fourth time around the block." I said, "This is not victory." And then I said, "Why don't you go another way to work?" Oh she said, "I never thought of that." That's the same thing. Jesus will help you to overcome. He will give you some very practical ideas of how to do it.

The second temptation is set in Jerusalem. The devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the temple complex. There is an enormous drop. It says the pinnacle of the temple, but it doesn't mean the pinnacle like you think of, you know, the pointy bits. There weren't any pointy bits on the temple. The pinnacle means the highest place of the temple. And those of you that have been to the Holy Land and gone over the Temple Mount, the guide will take you to that corner where Christ was traditionally tempted in His mind.

He was in the desert, remember, by Satan, who took Him in a vision or whatever to this pinnacle of the temple. And when you stand there, it does really give you a dizzy feeling because the temple is built on a ravine, and the ravine is hundreds of feet below and the pinnacle is hundreds of feet above. And if you stand there and there's nothing to stop you falling over, there's no rail etc., it is really quite understandable how that was a good place for the devil to take Jesus and tempt Him.

And what he asked Jesus to do was to demand miraculous protection as proof of God's love and provision for Him. In other words, he said, "Now look, sure, you know, God protected you when you were a baby and you escaped from Herod and whatnot. But you've got some time to go here. Why don't you just put him to the test? Why don't you make sure he's going to protect you onwards? Why don't we just have a little experiment here? Why don't you leap off the temple? And doesn't it say in the Scripture that God's angels will catch you and that you won't even dash your foot against a stone? That God will miraculously protect you when you come to Earth to do this work?"

And Jesus said, "It is written: It is wrong to put the Lord your God to the test." Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test. To what test? To the test of His character. To the test of His character. In other words, what he was asking Jesus to do was to doubt the character of God because of what might happen to Him. And he tests us with the same thing. In other words, something bad happens to you.

I had a girl say to me not too long ago, "I get in the car, I go to visit my mother, I pray that God will protect me. On the way I have a car crash and end up in hospital. Well, that wasn't very nice of God." She is doubting the character of God because He did not give her divine protection. And I hear women falling to that one all the time. "How could God love me when He allows bad things to happen to me?" Well, He allowed bad things to happen to Jesus.

You know, 99% of the time Jesus was miraculously protected, just like you and I are normally. Do you ever get to the end of the day, kneel down and say thank you for miraculously protecting me? Possibly you don't know how He's miraculously protected you. But there are many times that you do know. Something happens and you have a near squeak and you say, "Boy, you know, why me? That was terrific."

God miraculously protected every single one of us in this room. That's why you're sitting there listening to me. Your mother didn't have an abortion. Have you ever thanked God for that? For the right you had to choose eternity as a person, as an eternal person? Because He miraculously protected your mother from living in a day and age when she possibly might have had an abortion and you wouldn't exist? God has miraculously protected us every day from the germs, from the diseases that could wipe us out like that. But we don't think of it like that.

And when for His own good reasons, as with Jesus, your hour is come to enter into some fellowship of His sufferings, whatever, our temptation is this one: because God hasn't protected me, He isn't good. He isn't God. He isn't kind. He isn't holy. He isn't any of the things I thought He was. And Jesus said, "I won't test that. I know He's good. And when I'm hanging on the cross having bad things happen to me, I won't change my mind."

Doubt. That's a temptation that comes to all of us. But there's something more in this temptation: display. If the devil isn't tempting us to doubt His character when things that are hard happen to us, then he doubts us to display for our own reasons to use our own powers to get attention. We can't be happy without throwing ourselves around the temple. Make a spectacle of yourself, a splash in ministry. Want the limelight for the wrong reasons. Show off your spiritual abilities.

The devil doesn't want you serving in obscurity. He doesn't want you to do that in the women's ministry or anywhere else in the church. He wants you to be upfront, doing what she's doing or someone else is doing. It's a revelation of our Lord's ministry that He uses the sword of the Spirit again and again as a weapon against what the devil says to Him. And in comparison with Christ, Campbell Morgan says the devil was a poor swordsman.

When he attempted to use the sword of the Spirit, it would seem as though with a quiet yet mighty movement of his strong arm, Jesus wrested the sword from Satan. And if we will only give ourselves to knowing God's word as well as Jesus came to know it before He was 12, remember in the house of the book, memorizing the first five chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, then we will have a weapon to answer the devil with. It is written. It is written. It is written.

The third temptation is perhaps one we more easily recognize. In fact, Jesus dragged Satan into the open as I've said, so we could clearly see and recognize him when he comes to us in this way. He wants us to meet Satan with a resolute abandonment to the word of God, the will of God, and the worship of God. You know, it's very, very easy when you are upfront. Let me tell you some of the temptations that come to those of us that have teaching and preaching gifts.

To use that gift for your own aggrandizement as John Stott says. John Stott says the pulpit is a scary place for any son of Adam. The pulpit is a scary place for any son of Adam because we know ourselves. And the devil, if he is not directly confronting us, will use the world and the flesh or anything else he can to tempt us with this second temptation.

Satan wants us to use our position as he wanted Jesus to, to make a splash. Jesus said not that way. Remember what it says in Isaiah about God's servant: you won't even hear his voice in the streets. He refused to publish his miracles. He'll go around it quietly. He'll heal the leper and say don't tell anyone. He'll raise the dead. He'll move on to another town when he really gets popular because he's come to attend to the spiritual side of man first and the physical second. For the spiritual will last forever and the physical only for a time, and all flesh is of grass and like the flower of grass will pass away. But the spirit will endure forever. So we are not to use our God-given powers to our own advantage.

Well, what did Satan try next? He tried the third temptation, which of course was the biggie. And as I said before, he threw all everything else he tried out the window, stamped his devil feet in front of Jesus and said, "Worship me." You can just see his frustration, his evil frustration, his evil desires. And he said, "Look," flashed in front of Jesus' mind all the world. "I'll give you the world if you worship me. I'll give you the world if you worship me." And of course he's still saying that today.

And you know how he's saying it? "If you can't get things done God's way, Jesus, ask me. Just try me once. Try me once. I'll do it. I got power. Judas, you want 30 pieces of silver? I'll find it for you." And he does and he did. He wants us to rely on supernatural powers other than God's. You see, man's evil nature wants control over circumstances, the future and people, right? Now isn't that what you want control over? Your circumstances, your future and people.

So the temptation is we'll try and do it ourselves, use our own powers to manipulate and to make things happen that we want to. And when that doesn't work, we'll go to a power higher than ourself. And that's why there's a history of the occult, divination, magic, sorcery, from the oldest days to now, and a revival of it. And Satan tries by any trick or deception to get God's child to worship him by believing there is another source of power available other than God's to help us live life to the full. "I'll give you the world."

Lewis says when the devil can get a man vaguely to worship forces while denying the existence of spirits, the end of the war will be in sight for that man. He'll be defeated. There is a class documented in one of the books I've been reading where a lot of people came to learn about the New Age movement. And the man beginning the class wrote the name "God" on the blackboard. Then he handed the eraser to each in turn, and he wrote the name over and over again and said, "Come and wipe it off. You have got to eliminate your juvenile ideas how you've been brought up in your church culture and background from your mind. We have to start again."

And so each person walked up to the blackboard and rubbed off the name God. And then the teacher said, "Now the latent powers of your mind can now be let loose. And we're going to get in touch with people from other ages who have learned wisdom. And through channeling we'll get in touch with these people and they'll help us to live a full productive life."

Well, Christians believe this power comes from demons and from Satan himself. And his tactic is the same; his devices haven't changed. He's telling lies about God. Wipe him off the board of your mind. He isn't the creator. He isn't the sustainer. He isn't bigger than Satan. There are other forces bigger than him. And the other forces are the forces you have within yourself and now linking up to forces of dead people, good people that have gone before who can help you.

Now Jesus said, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve." Not Him and; Him only shalt thou serve. And He says get lost, Satan. And if Satan has been tempting you to even meddle with any of that stuff, repent of it. Renounce the devil and all his ways, and that's one of them, the third temptation. It's a way he gets men and women specifically at the moment to worship him. To rely on other forces that the devil tells them are good, other than God. Anything else than giving glory to God, remember, that's his tactic.

So temptation is this environment to strengthen us. And Jesus was led of the Spirit, led through it step by step, as you and I may be led by the Spirit through our temptations step by step. And when we're tempted to doubt, and when we're tempted not to trust, we need to remember that we don't need to fall. The devil cannot make you do it. God, of course, can give you the power to overcome if you'll avail yourself of it.

And remember that there is a timing. The devil left Him for a season, we're told, and angels came. And I know in my own experience when I have been through an intense time of testing that the angels come and it lifts and it goes. And I'm so glad for those respites. Doesn't mean he's gone forever. It means he's going to appear as he did with Jesus with the same temptations. And I don't have time to take; I'd love to. I've traced the times he came back to Jesus in the Gospels. And each time there was nothing new. Each time it was the same as Matthew 4.

But of course, Jesus dismissed it. He'd already overcome it. It had been that way. It was done. It was over. But the devil isn't very creative. So if we can become familiar with his devices as we are commanded to do so we will recognize him, then we will see him and answer him with a word. And remember the words of the little girl: don't you answer him, send Jesus to answer him when he knocks at your door.

And your part is to fill your mind with Scripture, with knowledge, to become biblically literate because the devil will use the Scriptures. But he doesn't know his Bible very well. You can know your Bible better than the devil if you put your mind to it because you have the help of the Holy Spirit to understand it and he doesn't. Temptation will strengthen you. There are seasons of temptation and He will school you in these things.

I remember when Stuart and I were in Africa once in Liberia, actually, on that beautiful station that has now been reduced to rubble, the radio station, by the war that happened there. We were staying in this idyllic place then and the palm trees and the missionary kids—I just love missionary kids—but what they would do for sport was a little bit different to what your kids do for sport. They would go crocodile hunting at night. And they'd get in these little tiny boats and they'd go out and they'd fish a crocodile and stun it or kill it and haul it into the canoe and they'd come back. Well, mostly little crocodiles about four feet, you know, this is missionary kid stuff. And even without an adult they'd go out shooting crocodiles.

Well, one day the adults and dads liked to do this too, taken all the kids out, girls and boys, and they had caught a big one. It was six foot long. They had all their trouble; two canoes. They killed it, put it across the canoes, brought it back, put it on the beach. And this was a wonder and I tell you, I do not like crocodiles. Dead crocodiles, all right. I took pictures of it and everybody took pictures of it and there was one gorgeous little boy who opened the crocodile's mouth and stuck his head in and said, "Take a picture!" So somebody took a picture and then there were four kids on its back and they were doing like this. And then we all went to bed. The next morning we got up. The crocodile had gone. Yes, it was not dead.

Well, can you imagine? My immediate thought was this little boy who had his head in the crocodile's mouth and the others messing about on its back. And what a picture of Satan that is. I am not inviting you to laugh at him or to underestimate his great evil or his great power. He's alive. Don't stick your head in his mouth. Let God deal with him. Let God deal with him. Don't be foolish.

There's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful and powerful, and He will not let you be tempted above that ye are able. Why? Because He's overcome and He's living in you and He gives you the power just as He gave His Son the power. Let me read you something in finishing.

When you hear the devil tell you things you almost want to hear and you sense his nasty presence near his whining in your ear. When he tells you satisfy your lust and paint the town brick red, send Jesus Christ to see him off and tell him what he said. For it's written in the Book of Books, recorded on its pages, that bread alone is not enough to fill one up for ages. For ages spent in other worlds where food is for the spirit are ages spent on feeding on the Son's eternal merit.

It's written in the Book of Books that Christ can satisfy, and we don't need the evil one to offer devil's pie to tickle sensual appetites or make us hunger still. For the more the devil feeds us, the more there is to fill. For it's written in the Book of Books that worship will transport us to sites of angels 'round God's throne adoring Him who bought us. The devil has no place in heaven, nor prophet, false, or beast, but only blood-bought sinners sit with Jesus at that feast. Won't heaven be wonderful? There won't be a devil. Let's pray.

Jesus, you said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." We don't need to, but by every word of God that proceeds from your mouth. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the victory you won. And even though the questions come, why do you still allow him to do as much damage as he's doing? We can leave those questions with you and not doubt your goodness and your character, but trust you as obedient, willing, humble servants.

And remember that a weak man with God is stronger than a strong man who stands alone. So when the devil comes, not if the devil comes, in the seasons of our temptations, may we send Jesus to the door to answer him. Teach us your word. Keep us close to your side. And I pray specifically for anyone listening to me who is at the moment faced with temptation totally inadequate to cope with.

And I pray you will restore, forgive and encourage through this message to reach up for the power that's available to a child of God. May we overcome in the name of Jesus. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.