In Matthew chapter 4, Satan comes to tempt Jesus by calling His identity into question (and I’m paraphrasing here): “C’mon, Jesus, if you were really the Son of God, you could turn these stones into bread… You could jump off this tower and not get hurt… Right? I mean, c’mon. Stop lying. Or else prove to me who you are…”

Let me ask you this question: does Jesus have to prove to Satan that He is truly God’s Son?

  • Do you need to prove to the doubters in your life that God is real?
  • Is that your responsibility?
  • Does God need you and me to defend Him?

I mean, God’s pretty big. He’s pretty self-sufficient. God doesn’t need us to be His defenders – He can take care of Himself. God’s call to us – in the face of doubt and questions – is to be faithful witnesses:

Faithful witnesses, who can say, “This is what God’s Word says, and this is how He has fulfilled His Word in my life…”

The doubters and the nay-sayers in your life will say, “Yeah, but what about THIS… and what about THAT…”, and they’ll start listing out all their questions about God, and theology, and all the bad things that happen in the world…

And you know what OUR responsibility is in the face of all their doubts and questions? Our responsibility is to say:

“I don’t know… I don’t know. I can’t answer all that. But what I DO know is this. This is what God’s Word says, and this is how He has fulfilled His Word in my life…”

The words “I don’t know” is one of the most freeing phrases that you can say as a Christian – and you have permission, from God’s Word, to say it!

One of the most effective witnesses to the identity and the authority of Christ on earth was the man who was blind from birth in John chapter 9. After Jesus healed Him from His blindness, and the Pharisees came and questioned him all about it – do you remember what his big defense of God was?

In response to all their scrutiny and all their theological questions, do you remember how the man defended God? He said, “…I don’t know.”

“I don’t know.”

He answers all of the Pharisees’ deep and probing questions about Jesus, three separate times, by saying,

“…I don’t know. I don’t know how He did it. But what I do know is this. THIS is what Jesus said, and THIS is how His Word was fulfilled in my life…”

That’s it! That’s all God requires of us in the face of doubts and questions and temptations. To say, “You know what – I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t know how to explain all of it… But what I DO know is this. This is what God said in His Word, and this is how His Word has been fulfilled in my life…”

God doesn’t need you and me to defend Him. What He wants is a faithful witness. And in order to be a faithful witness, all you need to know is what God has said in His Word, and how His Word has been fulfilled in your life.

That’s it. And that is how Jesus repels the temptations of Satan. He doesn’t try to prove Himself to Satan. He doesn’t NEED to prove Himself to Satan! Instead, He simply points to what God has already said in His Word, and He relies on the faithfulness of God to be sufficient for His life.

The human Jesus, who had reached the very ends of His human limitations in the wilderness – He showed us that Satan is beatable. That even at our weakest – even at our most vulnerable and depleted moments – we can repel the lies and the temptations of Satan by relying on God’s Word, and by relying on His demonstrated faithfulness in our lives.