Did Satan tempt Christ to commit suicide?

Scripture: Matthew 4:6, 1 John 2:16
Did Satan tempt Christ to commit suicide? Jesus' three temptations cover all temptations. Suicide is more normal for a non-Christian since there is no hope or a future. But for the Christian, suicide is not an option because it forever seals your bad circumstances.
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Caller:  Hey I was calling - I'd just like to say I appreciate your show on the radio tonight.  I was setting my clock to wake up in the morning and I overheard your conversation.  I said let me listen to this.

Pastor Doug:  Well praise the Lord!

Caller:  But um, my question was in Matthew 4 uh, verse 6, it says that, if thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down for it is written He shall give His angels charge concerning thee and in their hands they shall they bear thee up lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Pastor Doug:  Right.

Caller:  Before I was born again and filled with the spirit, I used to have thoughts of suicide and tried to commit suicide twice.  And now that I'm born again, um, when I face problems sometimes I try to fight back in the flesh and I know that the spirit rises up in me and I start to pray.  But I still feel those thoughts of going to the graveyard I would be better off dead and not have to deal with this.  And I just wanted to know is that an area where Satan tried to test Jesus with suicide or is that just, I don't understand that Scripture.

Pastor Doug:  Well the three temptations that Jesus experienced Phillip, they encompass every temptation that any of us face.  In 1 John chapter 2 it tells us that there are three basic temptations:  the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  Eve fell and Adam fell in those same three areas.  Christ overcame in those three areas and we're all tempted that way.  The devil tempts each of us with self-destruction, which is what that temptation was.  Now just for the record, if there are others out there like you - and incidentally Phillip before I was a Christian, I toyed with suicide quite a bit because without God life has no purpose anyway - and so suicide for the non-Christian is normal thinking.  If there's no God, if there's no purpose, if there's no eternity, if people are unhappy most of the time, then what's the sense?  And you know if you're going to just turn into fertilizer why not save time?

But for the Christian, once you realize that suicide does not usher you into a better dimension, suicide permanently seals your bad circumstances.  In other words, if you're struggling, suicide does not make it better.  Suicide seals it forever.  There's no reversing the bad circumstances.  As long as you're a Christian you've got hope of a new life, a new body, eternal life and when a person kills themself, all they have to look forward to is the resurrection of the damned.  In other words, your next conscious thought is not a better situation.  It's a worse one.  And so if anybody out there ever is thinking suicide is going to be an escape, that's the biggest lie of all.  What suicide does is it ushers you right into misery.  Your next conscious thought is the wrong resurrection.

Caller:  I understand.

Pastor Doug:  Because the Bible says that sin is the transgression of God's law and one of those commandments says, 'Thou shalt not kill', murder, and that would mean yourself too.

Caller:  Right.

Pastor Doug:  Our lives are a sacred gift from God.  So the devil is using a lot of ways today to tempt people to self-destruction.  Sometimes people commit suicide quickly some people do it by degrees, through drugs, through self-abuse.

Co-Host:  Very slowly.

Pastor Doug:  Yeah - little by little.  Some people do it by cigarettes - in little increments but hey don't ever be fooled by that one okay?

Caller:  Okay.

Pastor Doug:  God's got a big plan for you and I'm glad you called in tonight.

Caller:  Thank you!

Pastor Doug:  Now we all struggle with temptation.  You just read your Bible and keep claiming God's promises and He'll get you through it.  We all struggle with depression.  All right?

Caller:  All right.

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