Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” (Matthew 4:8-10)

Tell Satan To Scat

The devil knew who the carpenter’s son from Nazareth was. He tried to kill the infant when He lived in Bethlehem but failed. For nearly thirty years, Satan threw every temptation he could at Jesus and never succeeded in tempting the Lord. At the age of thirty, Jesus was to begin His great ministry. After He was baptized in the Jordan according to righteousness, His Father sent Him into the wilderness without food and water for forty days. The tempter came to Him and suggested He create some food to nourish the ravenous hunger He had. Jesus refused without the authority of His Father. Defeating the temptation, Jesus appealed to scripture as His defense.

Seeing Jesus would defend Himself with the word of God, Satan took a stab at using scripture against Jesus. Quoting loosely from the Psalms, the devil misapplied a text to tempt Jesus to test the will of His Father. Again, Jesus refused. Satan had become bolder in his temptation. The third temptation was an affront to God and the work of Jesus. Satan took Jesus to an exceedingly high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. What knowledge Satan had about the work of Jesus is unknown, but the devil tells Jesus that he would grant the power of the world – literally – to be given to Jesus if He would only bow down and worship Satan. This was the last straw for the Son of God. Jesus does not begin by appealing to scripture. He will use a passage from Deuteronomy to defeat the devil, but first, Jesus has a message for His adversary – “Get out of here, Satan, be gone.”

Jesus lost patience with the wiles of the devil. There is a time to argue with the deceiver, and Jesus would tell the devil worship only belongs to the one true God, but the Son of God had had enough of the antics of evil. He demanded Satan get away, and Satan did. Jesus was tired, hungry, miserable, and weakened, but His resolve never wavered. Fasting for forty days was remarkable enough, but to face the onslaught of the devil full-bore without giving in is the answer to how much Jesus loved His Father. He knew the importance of His mission, and He was taking any shortcuts. After the devil left, angels came and ministered to Jesus.

Satan was not through with Jesus. For the next three years, the devil stirred up a tumult of hatred, criticism, betrayal, and finally, death when Jesus was nailed to a cross. The Lord was in Hades for three days to the delight of Satan and the complete amazement of the evil one. And then Sunday morning came, and Satan knew his adversary had crushed his head. Jesus defeated the work of the devil to live a perfect life without sin. He lived for thirty years in obscurity and was sinless. With every part of the Jewish leadership breathing down His neck and the final judgment by the Roman government, Jesus remained stalwart in His denial of sin.

There are many ways to view the perfection of Jesus and how He overcame sin. In the story of the temptation following His baptism, a pattern emerges that every follower of Christ must make part of their lives. Jesus faced His tempter with the word of God. We must face our tempter with the word of God. Jesus believed in the word of God and applied its message to His life so He could refute the devil’s advances. Reading the word of God will not keep us from temptation. It requires the doing of the word, the application, and the illustration of the word in our lives. Jesus had spent thirty years preparing Himself for the battle with Satan.

Finally, one characteristic of Jesus that comes out of the third temptation is that sometimes we need to tell Satan to scat, get out of town, go away and leave us alone, be gone devil, and don’t come back. If it takes shaking a fist at his imaginary head, shouting out loud (because he will hear you), or turning and walking away – tell the devil to scat. David wished he had done that when he saw Bathsheba. Peter desired to take back his failure. We all have times in our lives we should have told the devil to scat and didn’t. Learn how to react. There comes a time to argue, and there comes a time to emphasize the debate by telling the deceiver to go away – SCAT DEVIL!!!