Luke 4:5-8 :

The devil, leading him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil said to him, “I will give you all this authority, and their glory, for it has been delivered to me; and I give it to whomever I want. If you therefore will worship before me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus answered him, “Get behind me Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’”

Here we see that Jesus was tempted with the classic offer to sell your soul to the Devil and be rich today. When I look around in America today I see that this offer still stands. There always seems to be a way to make a lot of money fast if you are willing to simply bend God’s rules and follow some of Satan’s.

It is interesting that Satan is clearly attacking Jesus through His humanity. Satan appealed to a human desire for gain by simply switching loyalties. It’s the “who’s your daddy, is he rich like me”-style temptation.

Jesus took great offense to this temptation. His Spirit was truly in charge of his desire and He maintained a far higher interest in God his Father than in all of the temporary wealth of the world. I believe that this is something that we can learn to do as well because we also have the Spirit of Jesus living in us as Christians.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can realize that nothing is as valuable as our relationship to God our Father and Jesus our Lord. There is no money or comfort that can take the place of our relationship with God. When we are in our right minds as Christians we too will say: “Get behind me Satan!” whenever we are tempted to envy the wealth, power or position of another or are tempted to consider exchanging our relationship with God for money.