Have you ever been tempted to turn stones into bread? I’ve struggled with a lot of temptations, but never that one! Why? Because the devil knows he would be wasting his time. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.

Is there anything wrong with turning stones into bread? Is there anything wrong with being hungry when you haven’t eaten for six weeks? Jesus, later in His ministry, and under His Father’s direction, multiplied the loaves and fishes by supernatural power and fed them to people who had been fasting only since breakfast!

The devil didn’t tempt Christ to turn the stones into fudge brownies or Baskin Robbins ice cream. He tempted Him to turn stones into bread–and that sounds like a pretty good thing to do when you have eaten nothing for forty days and nights.

All the temptations that the devil came up with to turn Jesus from His mission had one common denominator. Every one was designed to get Jesus to stop depending upon His Father’s power and use the power with which He was born.

Sins were repulsive to Jesus. Hebrews 1:8, 9 says it in so many words, He

“loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.”

“But unto the Son he saith , Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” – Hebrews 1:8, 9

So the devil would have been unable to attract Him by temptations to do wrong things. His only possibility was to try to get Him to do what was right–but in His own power.

We will look at the nature of Christ in more detail in theses 90 through 94. But to understand the subject of temptation, we need at least this much: Jesus was not tempted to do wrong things. He was tempted to do right things, but to do them in His own power–and we are tempted with the same thing.

Revelation 3:14-22 records the message to the Laodicean church. Laodicea isn’t short on works, but a relationship with Jesus is missing. Jesus is pictured as on the outside, knocking for admission.

The Laodicean needs to repent for his sin–not his sins. He has been living his spotless life apart from Christ. He has forgotten that

“with God outward show weighs nothing. The outward forms of religion, without the love of God in the soul, are utterly worthless.” – Ellen G. White Comments, S.D.A. Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 958.

Laodicea is a church filled with strong people who feel no need of a Saviour.

But there’s good news for Laodicea, in verse 21–a promise to the one who overcomes. And the method for overcoming? We can overcome in the same way Christ overcame. As Christ depended upon power from above Him, instead of power from within Him, so can we.

The devil will try to overcome us in the same way he tried to overcome Christ. And, as we are painfully aware, he is often successful in diverting our attention from the Saviour. He doesn’t come to us and ask if we would be interested in committing some heinous sin. He just tries to fill our days and hours and minutes with a multitude of things, good in themselves, that take our attention away from Jesus.

He tries to keep us too busy to spend time in fellowship and relationship with Christ. He doesn’t even care if we’re busy working for the church, just as long as we’re too busy for Jesus Christ.

That’s the bottom line. He doesn’t worry about the “good” things we do, as long as we do them in our own strength.

But we have been warned of the danger. Jesus not only came to die for us, He came to show us how to live. He came to show us how to resist the enemy’s temptation to pull away from our relationship with God and depend upon ourselves. When we understand the issues involved in sin and temptation, we will know where our strength lies.

As we refuse to separate ourselves from dependence upon Christ, even for “good” reasons, we will be overcomers through the power of God.