Luke #10: The Temptations of Jesus (4:1-13)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 4:1-13
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Bye, kids!
Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship with the church body of Eastern Hills: People helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day. Whether you are here in the room, or online, thanks for being part of our celebration of Jesus this morning. I’m senior pastor Bill Connors, and I’m grateful for this church family and being able to gather together.
If you are visiting with us for the first time today, thanks for choosing to worship with Eastern Hills! We would like to be able to thank you for your visit and to pray for you, so if you wouldn’t mind, please take a moment during the sermon to fill out a visitor card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. If you’re online, you can let us know about your visit by filling out the communication form at the bottom of our “I’m new“ page. If you’re here in the room today, you can get that card back to us in one of two ways: you can put it in the boxes by the doors at the close of service, or I would love the opportunity to meet you personally, so after service, you can bring that card to me directly, and I have a gift to give you to thank you for your visit today.
AV Ministry thanks.
Announcements
Announcements
AAEO ($6,860.79) Goal $19K VIDEO
Survey results aren’t in yet, and won’t be until our team’s next scheduled meeting after Easter. Sorry to those of you I told I thought we’d have the results on Thursday. Spend another moment on the survey.
Opening
Opening
Our focal passage last Sunday was Jesus’s baptism and then His genealogy as recorded by Luke. We heard the declaration of God the Father that Jesus is His beloved Son, and saw the Holy Spirit descend and rest upon Jesus in affirmation of His divine identity before we read through the list of names that makes up Jesus’s family history from (I believe) Mary all the way back to Adam, confirming His human identity. Rather than it being just an exercise in “gutting through” that passage, we see that the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke both exist to show that Jesus was not Joseph’s son. Matthew knew that Jesus couldn’t have come from King Jeconiah, but affirmed that Joseph did. Luke’s shows that Jesus’s human descent goes back to David’s son Nathan. So Jesus fulfilled is necessary for being the Messiah from a human perspective: He was a Jew, from the tribe of Judah, from the line of David, but not from the line of Jeconiah.
As a result of Jesus having both a divine identity and a human identity, He is the only mediator between perfect, holy God, and broken, sinful humanity… us. In all three of the Synoptic Gospels (“syn” meaning “together” and “optic” meaning “seen”)—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—the baptism of Jesus is immediately followed by the devil’s tempting of Jesus in the wilderness. This morning, we will consider that narrative in Luke chapter 4, verses 1-13.
So please turn in your Bibles or Bible apps to that passage in Luke 4, and stand as you are able in honor of the reading of God’s holy Word:
1 Then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4 But Jesus answered him, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone.” 5 So he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 The devil said to him, “I will give you their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 If you, then, will worship me, all will be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” 9 So he took him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written: He will give his angels orders concerning you, to protect you, 11 and they will support you with their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” 12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said: Do not test the Lord your God.” 13 After the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
PRAYER
I don’t know how many of you know this, but I’m kind of a gamer. Old-school gamer, to be honest. I’ve been playing video games since Pong when I was a kid, and I generally have played them on computer systems, and only recently started using a controller. I mean, I’ve played some newer-ish video games, most recently finishing Jedi Survivor (it’s a Star Wars universe game). I don’t play now nearly as much as I used to, and gaming for me is where I can have some mental downtime when I can find the time.
Many video games—whether they are fighting games or adventure games or shooting games or superhero games—have “boss” battles: times in the story where you have to try to defeat an extra-strong opponent by figuring out the opponent’s weakness and exploiting it.
Now, before you think that I’m going to say that the wilderness was Jesus’s “boss battle” against the devil… I’m not. It was the other way around. Jesus is the boss. The devil was looking for a weakness in the Son of God. And while he took several shots, he never found a weak point, because there isn’t one to find. And the devil ended up having to rage quit.
Ultimately, what the devil was trying to do was to undermine Jesus’s identity as the Son of God. If the devil could get Jesus to sin, then he could thwart God’s plan for the redemption of humanity and the restoration of Creation to a renewed state—a state where the devil would have no place, because death and sin would be no more. We tend to picture the scene as Jesus is out by Himself in the wilderness, and then right at the end, Satan brings his attack and shows up to tempt Him while Jesus is at His weakest.
But this isn’t what the Bible says. In fact, the Bible tells us that there were certainly more than three temptations, and that those temptations were likely constant during the forty days that Jesus was in the wilderness. Not only that, but the Bible also makes it clear in every narrative that it was the work of God the Holy Spirit—who had just descended on Jesus physically—to literally lead Jesus into the wilderness for the express purpose of being tempted. Look at each version:
1 Then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry.
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
12 Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving him.
This goes back to Jesus’s identifying with us as we saw last week in His baptism. The author of Hebrews tells us, Hebrews 4:15 “15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” Because Jesus was tempted as we are, He truly understands what it means to be human, and can be our advocate because He is one of us.
So how did the devil try to get the upper hand on the Son of God? What did he think Jesus’s weak spots would be? And what did those attacks amount to? Jesus was tempted with provision, power, plan, and protection.
1: Jesus was tempted with provision.
1: Jesus was tempted with provision.
Verse 2 ended with what we can easily expect to see following a forty-day fast: Jesus was hungry. Jesus is, after all, human. His human body at that point had not been glorified, and so it had some physical limitations that He had taken on that were part and parcel to the flesh. His hunger became the first recorded point of attack Satan attempted to exploit:
3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
When we read that Satan asked, “If you are the Son of God,” don’t see that as the devil having any doubt about Jesus’s identity as God’s Son. He knew exactly who Jesus is. And he’s not trying to introduce doubt into Jesus’s mind about His sonship. He’s attempting to cast doubt upon the Father’s love and care for Jesus… basically saying, “Wow, Jesus you’re hungry? Aren’t you God’s Son? How could He neglect You like this? You know what? You should just take care of Yourself…You could do a better job than what the Father is doing. You have the power—so go ahead and tell the stone to become bread so you can have something to eat. You need to look out for number one.”
This isn’t really anything new for the devil. All the way back in the Garden of Eden, this was how he approached things—that God could not be trusted, that He holds out on His children. After he intentionally misquoted God in order to open the door to calling His character into question, the crafty serpent blatantly declared that God had lied to humanity:
4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“God lied to you,” Satan whispered, “He’s keeping the good stuff from you. The Lord cannot be trusted.”
And we believe the lie, even though it was told first so long ago. Now, I’m not saying that every time that we distrust God that the devil is causing us to do so. I’m not Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. Instead, our relationship with God has been damaged, and we have what commentator Bruce Larson calls a “primal mistrust.”
“This primal mistrust in the goodness of God is behind every problem you and I experience.”
— Bruce Larson, The Preacher’s Commentary Series: Volume 26—Luke
It was this same “primal mistrust” that caused God’s chosen people, Israel, to reject Him again and again. Psalm 106 is almost completely dedicated to remembering and recounting how the nation of Israel sinned against God, recalling how they rebelled against Him (v7), forgot Him (v13), tested Him (v14), worshiped a gold calf (v19), despised His provision (v24), grumbled against Him (v25), sacrificed to idols (v28), angered Him (v33), disobeyed Him (v34), and defiled themselves (v39).
The truth is that we all struggle with this in some way, shape, or form. We all have areas of our lives where we don’t want to keep our hands open for God’s use as He sees fit, because we’re actually afraid of what He might ask of us. We think He might ask too much, or He might demand something from us that we can’t bear to do or to part with. But isn’t this a low view of the love of God?
Let’s agree on a couple of things here: being hungry was not sinful. That’s a normal response to a human being needing food. Certainly miraculously creating bread was not sinful. Jesus fed the 5,000 that way. So the facts of both Jesus’s hunger and Jesus’s ability were not the issue. We have to keep in mind what I said in the intro. Who led Jesus into the wilderness? The Holy Spirit. Where Jesus was and what He was experiencing were a part of God’s plan for His life and ministry. This moment was a line in the sand, and Jesus was faced with a question: Would He trust in the provision of His Father, or would He take His needs into His own hands?
Jesus’s response to the devil’s lies was to bring the truth of Scripture to combat them, and He showed that His view of the Father was one of complete trust in His provision.
4 But Jesus answered him, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone.”
Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, from Moses’s retelling of when God began providing the miraculous provision of manna from heaven as an illustration of how trustworthy He really is. Luke chose to shorten the quote. Matthew gives it more fully in his account:
4 He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Even though He is human as we are, His human appetites did not define His choices. His priority was being where the Father wanted Him to be, and to trust in His provision when God was ready to provide it. His focus was on God, not on His appetites.
Reflect in your heart for a moment. How are you tempted by your appetites to stop trusting in God’s gracious provision for you? It might be financially through excess debt. It might be relationally through looking to others to provide the meaning and purpose for your life that only God can provide. It might be sexually through pornography or inappropriate relationships.
Part of the problem here is that in some ways, we don’t actually like the fact that we aren’t actually in control of our own “destinies” if we follow Jesus—God is. And as a result, we also struggle to trust God in following His plan—especially if that plan is going to take us through difficulty. This is our second point:
2: Jesus was tempted with power and an “easier” plan.
2: Jesus was tempted with power and an “easier” plan.
I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my life when I faced a situation, and I was absolutely certain of how it would best be handled, and in my prayers I informed God of my brilliance and then just asked Him to make it so with His blessing. How arrogant and prideful! We are tempted to seize power and try to create our own paths of least resistance, even if they don’t fit with what God wants to do. Satan tempted Jesus with the same thing in his second temptation:
5 So he [the devil] took him [Jesus] up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 The devil said to him, “I will give you their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 If you, then, will worship me, all will be yours.”
There is obviously some “vision” aspect to this temptation, and Jesus is shown all the kingdoms of the world in a moment, promising that Jesus will receive the splendor of being the king of the world, as well as the authority to back up that claim, if He would just bow down to the devil in worship.
Not only that, but this plan was WAY easier than the one that Jesus was in the midst of completing! I mean, Jesus came to save the world—what better way to do so than to be appointed as the grand pooh-bah of the planet? No difficult path. No torture. No pain. No cross. No death.
The devil claimed that he could make such a deal: to give global power in exchange for worship.
The devil is referred to in a lot of different ways in Scripture that seem to indicate that there is a certain level of authority that he possesses. Paul calls him the “god of this age,” (2 Cor 4:4) as well as the “ruler of the kingdom of the air.” (Eph 2:2) Jesus Himself refers to Satan as “the ruler of this world.” (John 12:31). So there is certainly some authority there.
Jesus apparently didn’t dispute whether the devil could make good on his promise. He didn’t really need to, because of something that Satan said. Did you catch it? Look back at verse 6:
6 The devil said to him, “I will give you their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want.
“...it has been given over to me.” Given by whom? There’s only one person who fits that level of authority: God Himself. It is apparent from Scripture that God allows Satan to work his wiles here and to have a certain limited level of power, until such time as God decides that it’s time to set things right again, and then it will be curtains for the evil one. The devil’s offer could only have ever been temporary, because his authority would NOT last forever.
So true to his nature as a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), the devil is falsely trying to manipulate Jesus into skipping the Suffering Servant part and jumping straight to the King of kings part. But truly, Satan’s offer is truly only a political one, and it would make Jesus not the Christ, but more like the antichrist—the beast of Revelation 13. The devil was willing to force people to make their lives all about Jesus, and all Jesus had to do was give His allegiance to the evil one.
Generally speaking, we like power, and we like to make things easier for ourselves, even if it might mean missing out on an opportunity for growth. Our vulnerability to temptation in this regard is massive, because we struggle with both pride and impatience. This is a place where the devil can aim his fiery darts, because our desire for power and ease can cause our faith to be shaken when we feel that we lack control or when things get difficult.
But again, faced with this temptation Jesus responds with not just the right perspective, but with the perfect passage of Scripture:
8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
God’s Son was asked to give to the devil what belongs to God alone. He again quotes from the book of Deuteronomy—this time chapter 6, verse 13. Just as His appetites didn’t determine His choices with the first temptation, neither a desire for worldly power nor ministerial ease clouded His judgment now. Here at the beginning of His ministry, we see the heart posture that Jesus exhibited in the Garden of Gethsemane on display:
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
His focus was doing what the Father called Him to, and He was unwilling to waver in that position.
Likewise, Jesus calls us to that same kind of single-minded allegiance when we become His disciples. Consider what He said in Luke 9:23:
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
It’s really not about us at all. It’s about Him. Just as Jesus denied Himself in order to take up His cross, so we are called to do the same. Power and control are how we try to still make things all about us. While we might not say it out loud, we sometimes act as if the world really does revolve around us, and that our spouses, our children, our offices, our church, and students: our parents… even the people on the roads during our commutes… all exist for us in order to get us what we want.
Instead, Jesus tells His followers that we are to do exactly the opposite: we are to deny ourselves, not to vie for control and power. We are to take up our crosses, dying to our plans and priorities for ourselves, and wholeheartedly follow after Him. This is what it means to be a disciple. Are we willing to trust in God’s power and plan, rather than our own?
So the devil had attempted to derail Jesus through tempting Him regarding provision, power, and plan, but there was one more temptation that Jesus had to face in the wilderness.
3: Jesus was tempted with protection.
3: Jesus was tempted with protection.
Now, I know that this point sounds a little strange. But stay with me for a second. Each of these temptations focused on a Messianic trait, with the goal of destroying Jesus’s sonship so that it will destroy our salvation. The first attempt tried to get Jesus to mistrust God the Father. The second tried to get Jesus to trade obedience for expediency—given enough power, He wouldn’t have to go to the cross. Both had failed. And so finally, the devil chooses a different tack: He quotes Scripture to support his third temptation:
9 So he took him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written: He will give his angels orders concerning you, to protect you, 11 and they will support you with their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
The devil takes Jesus and has Him stand on the “pinnacle” of the temple. This could have been the highest point of the building itself (likely about 100 feet in height), or it could have been the highest point of the temple mount. That would have been the wall on the southeast corner, and a leap from it at the time likely would have been several hundred feet to the floor of the Kidron Valley below. Satan’s instruction is for Jesus to “throw [Himself] down from there.”
The Scripture that the devil quotes is from Psalm 91: verses 11 and 12. He quotes it accurately: certainly the devil knows the Bible.
11 For he will give his angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways. 12 They will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
When I read in my digital Bible, I have various highlighters at my disposal. Whenever I read a passage in the Old Testament which I believe to be Messianic, I highlight it in purple. This passage, all the way through verse 16, is highlighted purple. But I have to confess: when I studied this passage in order to preach this message, I discovered that I only see Psalm 91 as Messianic because Satan said it is. In fact, historically the entirety of Psalm 91 wasn’t considered to be Messianic by the Jews, but instead, is a poetic prayer acknowledging the fact that those who trust in God will be under His protection, even in difficult times.
So while he quotes the words correctly, the devil actually takes Psalm 91:11-12 out of context, and turns a passage about trusting God into a passage about testing God. His request of Jesus would force the Father into the position of having to step in and save His Son. I’m certain that Satan knew this when he did it. Should Jesus have taken the bait, one of two possible things would have happened: 1) He is rescued, but He has tested the Father’s truthfulness, which is sin unless God tells you to test Him (Jesus will address that in His response). This mars His perfection, and He can no longer be the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and God’s plan for our salvation is thwarted. Or 2) He falls to His death. Either way, problem solved in Satan’s view.
Anyone here ever run this type of test on God? “Lord, if you don’t want me to do this sinful thing, then you’ll stop me or give me a sign or fill in the conditional blank.” Instead of walking in trusting obedience, we try to force God to act to prevent our foolishness in order to prove Himself to us. If He (God Almighty) doesn’t jump through our hoop when we tell Him to, then we can go ahead and do things our way. This way of thinking even allows us to blame HIM for our sin: “I told God that all He had to do to stop me was x/y/z.” “If He really didn’t want me to sin, He could have blah-blah-blah.” “If God was against that choice, He should have ‘closed the door.’” And suddenly, it’s not that we have failed—He has. Our sin becomes His fault. How can He blame us, when He had every opportunity to stop us? We actually accuse Him of not protecting us...from us.
But Jesus doesn’t fall for it. He again quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 6 in His response to this particular temptation, but from verse 16 this time:
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said: Do not test the Lord your God.”
Jesus again clings to the truth of God’s Word as His response to these sinful temptations. He refuses to dictate to the Father how and when He must act, because He is in complete submission to the will of the Father.
The truth is that God is absolutely faithful. He understands that we will face temptations, but the Scriptures promise that He will give us a way out when we are tempted:
13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
But notice the order of things: God provides the limiting on the temptation at the front end. He then even provides the way out of the temptation if we will take it. Our responsibility is to surrender to the protection that He provides from us being overwhelmed by the things that tempt us.
And ultimately, this brings us to the point of this passage, which is our final point this morning:
4: The point: We need to run to Jesus when we’re tempted. (And we WILL be tempted.)
4: The point: We need to run to Jesus when we’re tempted. (And we WILL be tempted.)
At some point when I was in the student ministry, I taught through the temptation of Jesus (certainly more than once). And one of the big arguments that I am sure I made was along the lines of making sure that we are spending time in the Scriptures, hiding them in our hearts (Psalm 119:11) so that they are accessible to us at a moment’s notice, meditating on them so that we might know how to apply them.
And while I think a perfectly valid application of this fact is to challenge us to memorize and meditate on the Word of God so that we are as prepared as we can be when we face the temptations that the devil will bring our way, we must not lose sight of the fact that this application is only secondarily in view. We do not primarily have this passage of Scripture in order to say, “Jesus sure knew His Bible, and used it when He was tempted.” Not that that’s not true. I just don’t think it was the main point.
No, we have this passage first and foremost so that we can understand things about Jesus, not about us. It’s great for us to have Scripture memorized and to meditate on it. And while Jesus is certainly a model for us, I doubt that the devil tempted Him with that purpose. The goal of the evil one in this passage was to bring Messiah down. The temptations were truly present. The struggle was very real. And what do we learn from it?
We learn that Jesus understands what it is to be human. He gets what temptation feels like. He has experienced His own wrestle with temptation and come out victorious, so that we can come to Him when we are tempted, so that we might find forgiveness, healing, hope, and strength. We learn that trusting ourselves to God brings about victory, even if we have to struggle somewhat in the short term.
Think about it this way: the devil tempted Jesus to doubt the Father’s provision, and Jesus would say in John 4:32: “I have food to eat that you don’t know about,” because of the focus of His life on the will of the Father. The devil tempted Him to seize power and forge an easier plan for saving the world, but Jesus said that, “whoever wants to become great...will be your servant… For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:43-45). And we saw that the devil tempted Jesus to test the Father instead of trusting Him, but that Jesus would have nothing to do with that, declaring on the cross, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.” (Luke 23:46).
So ultimately, in His own time and in a way that glorified the Father, Jesus received everything that the devil had promised Him in a better form, and He didn’t have to compromise. So we can trust that God will bring about what He wants to bring about in our lives in the time that He wants to bring it about, if we will just keep “our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and saw down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.” (Hebrews 12:2-3)
You can trust in Christ. If you’ve never believed in Jesus, then I want to clearly tell you that it’s because of God’s love for you that Jesus came. Our sins have separated us from God, but Jesus took the punishment that we deserve for our sins when He died on the cross. And when we believe in His work for our salvation, surrendering to Him as Savior and Lord, then we are made right with God and are promised eternal life because Jesus has overcome death. It’s only in Jesus that we receive that gift.
Closing
Closing
You see, the devil isn’t done. He wants to keep you from hearing, keep you from understanding, keep you from believing. Even with Jesus, he wasn’t done after that third temptation, even though he had to go and lick his wounds after failing in this “boss battle.” The last verse of our focal passage says:
13 After the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
That word “time” means “an opportune moment.” The devil wanted to keep Jesus from fulfilling His mission, and He wants to keep you from turning to Christ for salvation. Right now is the best time to surrender and trust Jesus.
Prayer
Baptism
Church membership
Giving EHBCGIVE at 888-364-GIVE
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Ezekiel 25, Psalm 61)
Pastor’s Study tonight: Finishing Ephesians!
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you. 8 Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. 9 Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.
