#24 Lu.
4:1-13 JESUS DOING
Introduction:
In out text two Sundays ago Luke told us about Jesus being baptized.
This was the first act of His public
ministry. In out text last Sunday Luke
showed
by the family lineage of Jesus that Jesus qualifies to heir the
throne
of David. He is a descendant of David
through Nathan and through
Joseph's father-in-law, Heli. In
our text today Luke shows us that Jesus
qualifies
to be the Savior of men by successfully resisting the temptations
of Satan. In all of the history of mankind, Jesus is
the only human being
to ever live his whole life
without ever committing one single sin.
I.
Jesus being led by the Holy Spirit to the temptation
V. 1, " And Jesus being full of the Holy
Ghost returned from
I think that perhaps you will remember
that Jesus had left
traveled
down to
account,
He did not leave immediately after His baptism.
He stayed over one
full day and then left on the
following day to return to
during
His baptism that the Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove.
One reason that the Holy Spirit had come upon Him was that Jesus as a
man would not be dependant on
His own wisdom and power during His earthly
stay here on earth. Rather He would depend on the power and
leadership of
God. It was by the leadership of God that He had remained
over for one full
day after His baptism. It was now by the leadership of the Holy
Spirit that
He left the area where John was baptizing.
(V. 1), "...and was led by the Spirit into the
wilderness." Neither of
the gospel writers tell us at
what spot in the wilderness Jesus went.
The
point
is that it was the Holy Spirit of God that led Him to go into the
wilderness
at this time. Matthew says that the Holy
Spirit led Him into the
wilderness
for the specific purpose of being tempted of the Devil. God the
Father wanted Jesus to be tempted by the
Devil before He launched out into
His ministry. God wanted Jesus to be put to the test. It certainly was not
that God had any doubts about
Jesus passing the test. It was just that
God
wanted
Him to be already proven to be victorious over the Devil even before
He entered His ministry.
II. The first forty days of the temptation
V. 2, "Being forty days tempted of the devil..." Matthew says nothing
about
Him being tempted until after the forty days were ended. Luke,
however,
says that Jesus was tempted during all of the forty day period.
Apparently, however, the main temptation
did not come until after the forty
day period was over. That is the part that both Matthew and Luke
spoke
about
in their writings.
(V. 2), "...And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they
were
ended,
he afterward hungered." During the
entire forty day period, Jesus
ate nothing. I read after one writer who said that He
surely must have
eaten
something. He suggested that Luke meant
that Jesus, like John the
Baptist, ate only locusts and wild honey
which was available in the
wilderness. How far off can you get? How plain can God make it in His
Book? God inspired Luke to say that Jesus ate
nothing during that forty
days and that means that He ate
absolutely nothing. The word, nothing
means
"not one
thing." Jesus ate not one thing
during those forty days.
Luke, like Matthew says that at the close of the forty days without
food that Jesus hungered. This was more than just having a hearty
appetite;
He was famished. He was weak with hunger. He was physically in a weakened
condition. It was in this weakened condition that He had
His greatest
confrontation
with the Devil.
III. The first temptation which came at the
close of the forty days
V. 3, "And the devil said unto him, If
thou be the Son of God, command
this stone that it be made
bread." Note that the Devil said,
"If thou be
the Son of God..." Right off the bat, he cast doubt that Jesus
is the Son
of God. In effect he threw a challenge to Jesus: " If you are the Son of
God you prove to me that you are the Son
of God." The truth of the matter
is that the Devil knew to
start with that Jesus is the Son of God.
But even
if he had been in doubt, Jesus
was by no means under any obligation to prove
it to the Devil.
But there was more involved in the temptation than just to get Jesus to
prove
to Satan that He is the Son of God.
There was the temptation to try
to get Him to turn the stones
into bread and to eat. He was actually
trying
to get Jesus to do something
that He already wanted to do. I do not
mean
that Jesus wanted to turn the
stones into bread, but He did want to eat.
From the physical point of view, He wanted
to eat and He needed to eat.
What the Devil tried to get Him to do was to use His supernatural
unlimited
power to turn the stones into bread in order to have something to
eat. There would certainly be nothing wrong with
Jesus eating. He
certainly
had the power to turn the stones into bread.
But for Him to do so
on this particular occasion
would have meant two things. #1, He
would been
using
His supernatural power to benefit Himself and that is something He was
committed
not to do. #2, He would have been
following Satan rather than God
the Father and God the Holy
Spirit. And that is something that Jesus
likewise,
had no intention of doing. Jesus had no
intention of following
Satan even in the least.
It is worthy of our time right here to take note of the kind of
temptation
that the Devil placed before Jesus at this point. He appealed to
the appetite of the flesh, the
cravings of the human flesh. You see,
Jesus
was fully human. He was not some kind of super human. He was fully human.
And the flesh nature of Jesus Christ had
just as strong an appetite as
anybody
else. Someone has said, "There is
no limit to what a man will do in
order
to fill his belly." That may or may
not be so concerning other men,
but it certainly is not so
concerning Jesus. Jesus would not have
followed
the way of Satan even if it
meant bringing Him to the point of death.
He
had faith in God the Father
that God would provide for Him and He did not
need to yield to Satan in order
to have food.
V. 4, "And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written..." What did Jesus
do? He answered the Devil with Scripture. He pointed to the word of God
and says in effect, "I
will not get food your way. I will trust
in God to
sustain
me."
(V. 4), "...That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word of
God." The verse that Jesus quotes here is from
Deuteronomy 8:3. In that
verse
Moses reminded the children of
for forty years. Moses said that the reason God had fed them
in this
miraculous
way was that they should learn a lesson.
God wanted them to
learn
that a man does not live by bread alone.
Rather he should live by
every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
God was the one who had
sent the Israelites in the
wilderness and God had promised to take care of
them there. What they needed to was to learn to trust God
to take care of
them. So Jesus said in effect, "I do not need
to turn the stone into bread.
I can trust in God, my Father, and God
will take care of me."
What I want you to notice in this reply is that it is not in one's
ability
to quote Scripture that one finds the strength to resist temptation.
The strength to resist temptation is in
one's willingness to follow the
teaching
of God's word. If one will follow the
teachings of God's word,
then he will find the strength
to resist temptation.
IV. The next temptation as recorded by
Luke
Both Matthew and Luke agree that this was the first of the three main
temptations
which the Devil presented to Jesus. They
do not, however,
present
the last two in the same order. Matthew
list the temptation on the
pinnacle
of the temple as the second in order.
Luke lists the temptation in
the high mountain as the
second. Luke, however, does not say that
he has
listed
them in the exact order. Matthew
does. So we are to understand that
this event that Luke lists in
the second place actually took place last.
However, the Holy Spirit who inspired Luk a mountain
somewhere
close to
mountain
that is in a wilderness area somewhat between
mountain
it was. What is important is what took
place on that mountain.
What happened was that the Devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the
world. Now it is to be understood by this that the
Devil used his own
supernatural
power right here. One would not be able
with the natural eye
to see all the kingdoms of the
world from any one mountain--no matter how
high it might be. The Devil used his supernatural power to show
Jesus all
the kingdoms of the world by
means of a vision. He showed one kingdom
right
after
the other until he had showed them all.
It must have been a very
impressive
show. He showed Him the various nations
of
and
wealth,
all of the beauty, all of the glamour, and all of the fun and
pleasure
that goes on in the world.
Then when he got through showing all this to Jesus, he said, "I've
got a
proposition
for you." V. 6, "And the devil
said unto him, All this power
will I give thee, and the glory
of them: for that is delivered unto me; and
to whomsoever I will I give
it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall
be thine."
Now the Devil knew that Jesus was the Creator of all
the world. And he
knew that in the plans of God
Jesus would get all of these kingdoms in the
millennium. But he also knew that at the present time
that these kingdoms
had not yielded their
allegiance to Jesus. Not one. Not one kingdom in all
of the world had yielded her
allegiance to Jesus. Not even
chosen
nation.
The Devil also knew that in God's plan before Jesus could rule the
kingdoms
of the world, He must first suffer untold agony on the cross. So
what the Devil was offering to
Jesus would have been every appealing to
anybody
else in His situation. He was offering
Him the rulership of the
whole
world without having to go to the cross.
Jesus, of course, did not take the Devil up on his offer. Let me tell
you, my friends, you and I had
better be glad that He did. You see, if
Jesus had not gone to the cross, we would
all spend eternity suffering in
the
V. 8, "And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me,
Satan:
for it is written, Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt
thou serve." Once again Jesus quoted Scripture. But He not only quoted the
Scripture; He obeyed the teachings of the
Scripture. In our efforts to
overcome
temptation in our own lives, it is not only important that we know
the Scripture, but it is especially
important that we obey the Scripture.
If we will obey the Scripture, we will
overcome that particular temptation
and do right.
The Scripture that Jesus quoted here forbid that He should fall down
before
the Devil as the Devil had asked Him to do.
V.
The final temptation in the order that Luke gave it
For the next and final temptation in the order that Luke has them listed
the Devil carried Jesus to the
city of
understood
that he picked Jesus up bodily and threw Him over his shoulder
and marched off to
powers. There they were in the wilderness one moment
and the next they were
in
pinnacle
of the temple..." The term,
pinnacle of the temple, simply means a
very high point on the
temple. They were able to look down and
see the
priests
and Levites going about their work. They
were able to see the
people,
the common people, as they gathered in the court yards of the
temple. And, I think it is safe to say that if Jesus
had yielded to the
temptation
of the Devil and did what the Devil asked Him to do, at least
some of those people would have
been able to see Him.
Notice what the Devil asked Jesus to do.
(V. 9), "...and said unto him,
If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself
down from hence." Again the Devil
cast doubt upon Jesus being the
Son of God and challenged Jesus to prove it
to him, the Devil, that He is
the Son of God. Furthermore, he called
on
Jesus to do something that was almost
certain to bring Him almost certain
acceptance
by the leaders in the Jewish religion.
If Jesus could win these
men to His cause He would be
assured of winning the whole nation. The
nation
would follow her religious leaders as accepting Him as the Christ,
the Son of God.
The Devil knew, of course, the natural fear that almost any man would
have in jumping off such a high
place. He also knew that the humanity of
Jesus would be just as reluctant to jump
as anybody else..
So the Devil did
some Scripture quoting,
himself. V. 10-11, "For it is
written, He shall
give his angels charge over
thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they
shall
bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."
He quoted a Scripture that is found in
Psalm 91:11-12. He did a good job of
quoting
the Scripture. The problem is that he
misapplied the Scripture. He
sought
to make it mean something that it was never intended to mean. It was
never
intended to lure Jesus or anybody else to jump off high place
expecting
God then to make sure that they landed safely.
Jesus knew that this would be a misapplication of Scripture and so He
answered
the Devil accordingly. You will note
that Jesus never said
anything
derogatory about the Scripture that the Devil quoted. He had the
highest
kind of respect for the Scripture. There
was certainly not anything
wrong
with that Scripture. What was wrong was
the Devil's twisting the
Scripture around to try to make it mean
what it was never intended to mean.
What Jesus did was to quote another Scripture showing that He was not to
jump off the pinnacle. V. 12, "And Jesus answering said unto
him, It is
said, Thou shalt not tempt the
Lord thy God." When Scriptures are
rightly
interpreted,
they do not contradict one another.
Instead, they harmonize
with one another. If Jesus had done what the Devil tried to get
Him to do,
He would have been in direct obedience to
the plain teaching of this other
Scripture.
VI. The temptation ended
V. 13, "And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he
departed
from him for a
season." Not all of the Devil's
temptations were limited to
the three temptation listed
here. We have already seen that the
Devil
tempted
Him in some manner during the entire forty day period of fasting.
He may have tempted Him in some other way
somewhere down the line. But at
least
for the time being, following these three special temptations, he left
Jesus and did not bother Him any more for
a while. It is evident from the
wording
here that the Devil did return to bother Jesus again later. It does
not say that he would tempt Him
any more. It just implies that he would
come back to bother Jesus some
more. I really think that what is in
mind in
this part of the verse is that
the Devil would later come back to make a lot
of trouble for Jesus through
the lives of the Jewish leaders.
Eventually he
would
make so much trouble for Jesus that it would cost Jesus His life.
VII. Some valuable lessons for us
Now listen, there are a lot of very valuable lessons that we might learn
from this passage of
Scripture. I want to concentrate on just
four things.
Let us note first of all that the Devil is
real. Just as there is a real
living
all knowing, all powerful God in heaven even so there is a real
Devil. Just as there is a great
Spirit God who works for righteousness and
goodness
and love and mercy, even so there is a powerful evil spirit who
works
for evil and destruction. The Devil is
the great enemy of God and he
is the great enemy of all
mankind. The Devil never does anything
good for
anybody. He does not do good
even for his most devoted followers. He
always
seeks to do everybody harm.
The second lesson I want to point out to you is that the Devil is the
great
tempter of man. He tempted Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden and
caused
them to eat the forbidden fruit. He
tempted Jesus Christ, but
without
success. He tempts all mankind and has
been successful in causing
every
human being except Jesus Christ to sin. " All
have sinned and come
short
of the glory of God," Rom.
The only human being who has ever lived without ever yielding to the
temptations
of the Devil is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus
was just as human as you and I
and yet without sin. He never in all His
life committed one sin. Jesus was successful in resisting the
temptations
of Satan in the
wilderness. He was successful in
resisting the temptations
all of His life. It was as the sinless Lamb of God that He
went to the
cross
of
through
the shedding of His innocent blood that lost sinners can be saved.
God had promised that if a man would trust
in Jesus he will be saved. John
perish
but have everlasting life." Rom.
6:23, "For the wages of sin is
death,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ."
John 3:18, "He that believeth on him
is not condemned, but he that believeth
not is condemned already
because he hath not believed in the name of the
only begotten Son of God."
The third lesson that I want to point out is that the Devil is at work
still. He is at work trying to get unsaved people to
refuse to believe in
Jesus Christ as Savior. He does not care for people being religious
if they
will just not repent of their
sins and trust in Jesus Christ to save their
souls. Just as the Devil worked with Jesus in Christ
the Son of God to
tempt
Him to do evil, even so the Devil works with every unsaved person to
try to keep them from being
saved. The Devil does not want anyone to
trust
in Jesus and get saved. The Devil wants every human being to suffer
and
burn in everlasting fire.
Even after one does trust Jesus and is saved by the grace of God, the
Devil tries in every possible way to get
him or her to live a wicked and
ungodly
life. It is sad to say that a few saved
people are hoodwinked by
the Devil into living the kind
of life that he wants them to live.
There is
one thing about it, the Devil
does not want you to surrender your life to
the Lord. He laughs up his sleeve every time he gets us
saved people to do
something
that brings reproach on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Even
after
the Apostle Peter was saved Jesus told Peter that the Devil desired to
sift him as sand. But Jesus also told Peter, "But I will
pray for you."
The Devil tried to ruin Peter's life and
would have done so, but the Lord
prayed
for Peter and the Lord helped Peter. The
fourth thing is that Jesus
is able to help the Christian
to resist temptation and sin. He will help
you, Christian friend, if you
will let Him.
Conclusion
What I am calling on you to do this morning is for you who are unsaved
and headed for the fires of
hell to repent of your sins and trust in Jesus
Christ to save your soul. Call on Jesus right now and ask Him to have
mercy
on your soul. Ask Him to save you and keep you out of the
fires of hell.
Ask Jesus to cleanse you from every sin so
that you will go to heaven when
you die. Right now the Lord is listening for you and I
am asking you to
call on Him.
I am also calling on every save person in this building to surrender
your life to Jesus. If you are in need of a church home I am
calling on you
to walk this isle and to
present yourself to this church as a candidate for
membership. If you have been Scripturally
baptized and hold membership in a
church
of like faith and order, then you may come on promise of a church
letter. If you are saved and do not have Scriptural
baptism then you may
come and unite with us as a
candidate for baptism. If you are saved
and
have held membership in a
Baptist church that no longer exists, you may
unite
with our church by statement. In any way
that we can Scripturally
receive
members we invite you to come.
But to those who are unsaved, let me say that we who are saved can
remember
the time when we were in the same condition that you are now in.
We were lost and without hope. We were headed for the pits of hell. We
were just as sinful as you are
and perhaps even more so. We know what
it is
to be lost. We ask you to turn to Jesus today and to
trust in Him and be
saved. I can assure you that you will be eternally
glad that you did.