Luke 4:1-13 (See also Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13)
Bart W. Newton, Preaching Minister
To view a simple online worship service of “Word, Communion and Prayer,” and please click on the the following link: "The Temptations of Jesus: He Remembered His Identity & We Should Ours" .
(Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.)
• In the first message of the series, we examined the baptism of Jesus and how closely, in many ways, our baptism as Christians relates to His.
• Today we’re looking at the temptations of Jesus by Satan in the wilderness.
• All of us know what it’s like to be tempted regularly. We’re tempted to be disloyal to God by meditating on, saying or doing something against His will. To give in would be a sin of commission.
• We’re also tempted to be disloyal to God by failing to think, say or do what is within His will. To give in to this kind of temptation would be a sin of omission.
• In today’s lesson we’ll learn from Jesus how He set aside His divine privileges, lived like a man, took the role of a suffering servant, and succeeded where Adam and Israel both failed. In addition, we’ll learn from Jesus how to successfully withstand Satan’s schemes and do what is right in God’s eyes.
Luke 4:1-13:
1And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him 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 command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
The Temptations:
• The account of Jesus’ temptations provide more than an example for how we are to withstand Satan’s temptations, though they do that.
• However, there are at least two or three other significant things going on here to which I’m indebted to Michael Wilcock and Michael Green from their commentaries on Luke and Matthew respectively.
• Satan picks up where God the Father left off at Jesus’ baptism by addressing Jesus’s identity: “So you are God’s Son are you?” Then he follows with “Well, then prove it!”
• “God’s Son ought to have the right to satisfy His physical hunger. You have the power to transform bread-looking stone into real bread. Do it.” (v. 3)
• “Surely God’s Son has the right to rule over all the world’s nations and enjoy their glory. Since I can give it to You, if You just worship me as your lord, You should compromise a little and go for it.” (vv. 5-7).
• “God the Father has promised You protection from harm. If you jump off the highest point of the temple, Your Daddy will send angels to catch you. Let’s see it!” (vv. 9-11).
The Answers:
• It’s easy to see that Jesus countered every temptation with the Scriptures. (But we also need to remember that Satan can quote Scripture as well!)
• Why did Jesus quote the Scriptures He quoted for each temptation?
• Did you know that every answer Jesus gave Satan is from Deuteronomy (8:3; 6:13; 6:16)?
• Did you know that the word Deuteronomy means “the second law” as in a restatement of the divine law given by God to men through Moses.
• God gave the law for man to live by, correct?
• Just as Jesus identified with humanity at His baptism, He’s doing it again by not playing His “divinity” card.
• Listen how Michael Wilcock describes Jesus’ answers: “’You suggest that feeding my body may take precedence over obeying my God. But God has told men—men—‘that they shall not live by bread alone; therefore I shall not do so. You offer me universal power, at the price of worshiping you. But God has told men that they are not to worship any but him; therefore I shall not worship you. You propose that I should test his promises to suit my own convenience. But he told men that they are not test him in this way; therefore I shall not do so.’” –Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke, p. 59
• Jesus set aside His privileges of divine glory and power and humbly put Himself in the position of a man under the authority of God’s law!
• We see Jesus do this throughout the Gospels, such as when He was betrayed and arrested. Peter pulled a sword, cut off a guy’s ear to try to stop Jesus’ arrest. Jesus told Peter to put away the sword and said,
• Matthew 26:53: Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?
• This reminds me of that powerful and beautiful passage in Philippians were Paul tells us to have the same attitude as Jesus in dealing with others—consider one another more important than ourselves:
• Philippians 2:6-8: 6 Although he was in the form of God and equal with God,
he did not take advantage of this equality.
7 Instead, he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant,
by becoming like other humans,
by having a human appearance.
8 He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross. (GW)
• In the wilderness, Jesus is doing what the first Adam failed to do in the Garden—obey God.
• Jesus was being and doing what man was meant to be and do and as Philippians says, He will do it “even unto death”.
• There’s something else to consider. Satan was very strategic with the temptations he dangled in front of Jesus.
• Israel was looking for their Messiah to come as the conquering King who, among other things would reverse Roman occupation and dominance over Israel.
• Jesus, however, chose to come as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah and by doing so ultimately becomes the conquering King through His death, burial and resurrection!
• You see, Michael Green points out that the Jewish rabbis of the day expected that when their Messiah King came, he would stand on the roof of the holy place and announce “You poor, the time of your redemption draws nigh.”
• The rabbis also believed that when the Messiah King shows up the gift of manna in the desert would be repeated. (Why they got so excited when Jesus fed the thousands in the desert which is why they tried to make Him king.)
• Manna in the wilderness would be a sign of the coming kingdom!
• Satan was tempting Jesus to short-circuit the suffering of the cross, cast aside obedience, take advantage of His divine privileges as God’s Son, and meet the expectations of the masses and do what would be popular.
• Jesus chose to have none of it. He would obey His Father whatever it cost Him!
Jesus succeeded where Adam failed.
• Satan tempted Adam to eat the delicious looking fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one fruit God told Adam not to eat. Adam and Eve ate it and released all the suffering, pain, illness, wickedness and heart ache throughout the world today. Even the rest of nature was thrown out of whack by it.
• Jesus, whom the NT calls the Second Adam took the humble high road, laid aside His Son of God divine privileges and obey God as man was intended to obey.
Jesus also succeeded where Israel failed.
• When Satan tempted Jesus to turn the stones to bread, Jesus answered by quoting from Deuteronomy 8:4. What was the context of His quotation?
• Moses was reminding the Israelites before they were to finally cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land how God had led them in the wilderness for the previous 40 years:
• Deuteronomy 8:1-5: “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.
• During their 40 years in the wilderness, Israel failed test after test of their hearts to trust and obey God.
• Even though God miraculously led them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea on dry ground, when they got to a place in the wilderness without water, they questioned whether God was with them and accused Moses of bringing them out in the wilderness only for them, their kids and livestock to die of thirst. They were at the point of stoning Moses for Pete’s sake! “Give us water, Moses!”
• Moses said why are you on my case and why are you putting the LORD to the test?
• Moses went to God and said, “What shall I do with these people!”
• Exodus 17:5-7: 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
• Israel was also idolatrous with the golden calf.
• And when God provided them nutrient-rich bread from heaven every morning Sunday-Friday they disobeyed His gathering instructions.
• During Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness, which was symbolic of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness, Jesus obeyed God every time He was tempted to do otherwise!
By accepting the role of Suffering Servant, Jesus would become the conquering King through His life, death, burial, and resurrection!
By the way, who ended up with the authority over all nations? Jesus:
• Matthew 28:18: All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, Therefore…
Applications:
1. Just as Satan attacked Jesus’ identity as God’s Son, he will try to get you to doubt yours as a child of God.
• Jesus knew who He was and His ministry flowed out of that.
• If we have been born again, we must remember that we also are children of God, loved and accepted. We should live and minister assured of our identity. This prevents works salvation and burn out.
2. Immediately following spiritual highs don’t be surprised by times of great temptations.
• Mountain top experiences are wonderful and necessary from time to time, but they are not where followers of Christ live.
• Michael Green: “We are not meant to live on spiritual highs. We are meant to live on the bread that comes from God alone, even if it is bread in the desert. God deliberately allows temptation. Its arrival does not mean that God’s blessing has evaporated. It simply allows the [short-lived] and the emotional to be separated from the lasting. Temptation builds spiritual muscle.” –Michael Green, The Message of Matthew, p. 82
• 1 Corinthians 10:13: There isn’t any temptation that you have experienced which is unusual for humans. God, who faithfully keeps his promises, will not allow you to be tempted beyond your power to resist. But when you are tempted, he will also give you the ability to endure the temptation as your way of escape. (NLT)
3. To faithfully live by God’s Word I must know and obey God’s Word.
• What is common in all three of Jesus’ answers to Satan’s temptations? “It is written…,” “’It is written…,” “It is written (said)…,”
• Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and He knew Deuteronomy.
• If we have truly received Christ and been born again, we have the Holy Spirit.
• We are to use God’s Word as part of the armor of God to fight the schemes of the devil:
• Ephesians 6:17: …the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God…
• We must learn our way around the Scriptures. If we don’t know the Word and don’t trust the Spirit, how will we stand against the devil’s temptations?
• With all due respect, understand, that five minutes with the verse of the day coming across your phone day in and day out isn’t sufficient.
• Reading a short devotional from a book is beneficial. I do it myself, but it isn’t sufficient.
• Some question why I include so much Scripture in my sermons. It is because I want to help us overcome our Biblical illiteracy so we know, share, obey, and pray God’s Word and live victoriously over sin and the devil and help some folks cross over from the dark side.
• We’re trying to help people begin to really focus on the Bible for themselves and let the Scriptures speak for themselves by using the 3/3 Discovery Bible format.
• There is a place for lecture teaching, just as I’m doing right now. There is a place for commentaries, Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias, I use them every week and I’ve spent a small fortune on them. But there is also a necessary place for you and me to learn to sit before the Scriptures, patiently ask questions like “What do I appreciate about this passage? What do I struggle with in the passage and don’t like the taste of? What does it tell me about God? What does it tell me about people? And then ask the Holy Spirit to make clear to me if there is anything from the passage I am to obey and put into practice in a concrete way.
• We’ve spent year after year in Bible studies and listening to sermons gaining information without experiencing much transformation because we’ve not sought to trust, obey, pray, and share the Good News of King Jesus!
• Spiritual maturity involves three things: knowing, obeying, sharing.
• Surely you can find a way to spend at least 30 minutes a day in the Word, not just reading it but studying it, meditating on it, praying over it. For some this will be easy; for others not so much because of you stage of life so you’ll need to be creative. But it will be worth it to you and the church for you to do it.
• I’m constantly surprised how many Christians who have been in the faith a number of years and have never read the entire Bible, not even the New Testament. And yet the Bible is God’s love letter to you and me!
• Every love letter I ever received from Deloris I read completely, over and over and over!
4. Satan knows to tempt us during our weakest moments; be on guard.
• Jesus was probably tempted by the devil throughout His 40 days of fasting, but at the end of it, at His hungriest and perhaps most fatigued, Satan came calling.
• Satan knows our weaknesses and he seeks to exploit them.
• He comes at when we’re especially tired and tries to make us think that we deserve to satisfy some fleshly desire, which in the end always proves to be unsatisfying.
• Maybe he tempts you when you feel stressed or overwhelmed. Maybe he comes when you are alone and have your guard down.
• Stay alert. Remember and obey the Scriptures. Seek the Spirit’s help.
• Just think, if Jesus had given in to any one of Satan’s temptations, we would be condemned in our sins for eternity, separated from God and without a hope in the world! But Jesus obeyed!
• And another marvelous thing about Jesus being tempted…
5. Jesus understands our temptations. He’s here to help:
• Hebrews 2:18: For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
• Hebrews 4:15: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. (NIV)
• Such is the King we have the privilege of dining with each Lord’s Day in His memory!