Book of Luke - Ch. 4, Vs. 1-13 (01/26/2003)

Yeah, it must have been that group, that other group, that young group.

Let's turn to Luke chapter 4 this afternoon, please, and we're going to pick up at verse 1.

Why don't you follow along with me, we're going to read this whole passage down through verse 13. And Jesus, being full of the

Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil.

And in those days he did eat nothing, and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.

And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command these stones that it be made bread.

And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written that a man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

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 give it. If thou therefore will worship me, all shall be thine.

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. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him,

If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from here. For it is written,

He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee. Notice how the devil quotes scripture.

I should say misquotes scripture, but he's using scripture to do his evil deeds.

And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against a stone.

And Jesus answered, answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the

Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed him, you might want to put a paragraph around these last three words, for a season.

That's the way the devil always is. He only departs you for a season, then he comes back. But let's go back to the top of this passage and discuss this, see what we can learn from it for ourselves.

Let's have a word of prayer first. Father, we thank you for the services this morning, for the fellowship time that we had at lunch.

We ask you to bless our time in the word this afternoon, that it might be fruitful that you teach us, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan and was led by the

Spirit into the wilderness. Do you find it interesting that it was the Spirit of God that led him to be tempted?

Remember, any of you around back in the laugh -in days on TV, and was it

Flip, who was it, Flip Wilson used to say, the devil made me do it. The devil made me do it. Well, isn't it interesting that here in this passage, it puts

God as being the one in control, not the devil. This was not the devil's idea.

God's the one that led him out here. So God is in control of this situation. He led Jesus out here into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, so there was purpose in it.

When you are tempted, there's purpose in it. You can focus on the devil if you want to, and blame him if you want to, but the truth is

God led you to that place in your life for his purposes and for your good.

And all of the things that happen in our lives, whether we perceive them to be bad or good, they're really for good if you look at it from God's point of view, because he's using it to make you be who you have to be when you meet him.

So even the things we think are bad, God uses them, but we would certainly think of this as a bad event.

We wouldn't go looking for this, and you shouldn't go looking to be tempted, but there will be temptations.

Before we move a step further, I have to take you over to James, and let's talk about what temptation is from the human viewpoint.

It says in James chapter 1, verse 13, Let no man say when he is tempted,

I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.

So there's a difference between saying that God led him into the wilderness and saying God tempted him.

God did not tempt his son, but he did lead his son to the place where Satan was there, and Satan tempted him.

Now go on and it says what temptation is, verse 14. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.

Then when lust hath conceived it brings forth sin, and sin when it's finished brings forth death.

So you have to ask the question if the thing that causes temptation is the lust of man, could

Jesus really have been tempted in chapter 4? And the answer to that is yes and no.

Yes, he was tempted if you look at it from the devil's point of view, because the devil thought he was tempting him, and he was doing everything he could to tempt him.

So he was tempted if you look at it that way, but if you look at it from Jesus' point of view, there was never anything in him that desired to do the things that the devil told him to do.

Now you say well that's different between me and him. Well yes and no there too. Turn with me to 1

John chapter 5 and verse 17.

This talking about you, if you're a Christian today, talks about the Christian, if unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not unto death.

We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not, interesting verse isn't it, that he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one touches him not.

We know that we are of God, but the whole world lies in wickedness or in the wicked one. Now back to Luke chapter 4, that tells us that if you're born again, the new man cannot be tempted.

Now you may have never thought of it that way. The problem is you still have the flesh, and the flesh can be tempted with everything.

The flesh can be as evil as the devil, the very flesh you live in on the carnal natural side of yourself, but if you've been born again, and you have the spirit of God dwelling in your heart, and your body is the temple of the living

God, then there is that part of you which the Bible calls the new man. The apostle Paul talked about that a lot in the book of Romans, and in the book of Ephesians.

And the new man, the born again regenerated, that means you've been regened, it means you're born into this world a sinner, but when you get born again, you get

God's genes, you get God's nature, that part of you cannot even be tempted, let alone sin.

So how does it behoove us as Christians to walk in the flesh or in the spirit? Easy question to answer.

If you walk in the flesh, you can be tempted, and you can sin. If you walk in the spirit, not only can you not sin, but you can't even be tempted.

There's nothing in that part of you that wants to do any of the stuff Satan can put before you.

Nothing. It doesn't want to do anything but what God wants to do. But your flesh pulls against all that and wants to do whatever it wants to do, because it is selfish, which is part of the characteristics

Satan had, and is prideful, and wants to take the leadership of control of your life, your flesh does.

So it's very important that we understand that as we look at this picture of Jesus in chapter four being tempted, he's only being tempted from the point of view of the devil doing the things that should tempt a person.

He is not being tempted from the inside because he's not interested in the stuff the devil's showing him.

And that's a picture of your new man. That's a picture of the born -again Christian who's also in the

Word every day, reading the Bible, and praying and walking with the Lord. As long as you're in that mode, you can't even be tempted, let alone sin.

Your flesh can always be tempted, so we have to be careful, but there's a lot to be learned about that in this passage too, so let's continue.

Verse two, chapter four of Luke, being 40 days tempted of the devil, and in those days he did eat nothing, and when they were ended, he afterward was hungry.

And the devil said to him, if thou be the son of God, command this stone to be made bread.

Now, there are three temptations that the Bible lists for all of us. The first is the lust of the flesh, and the second is the lust of the eyes, and the third is called the pride of life.

And you're going to find that Satan attacked all of these three areas, or attempted to attack these three areas, in the man side of Jesus.

The truth is, though, that Jesus, even as a man, did not walk in the flesh. Oh, yes, he walked in a body of flesh, but he was not controlled by that body of flesh.

It was his servant. And Jesus himself walked by the

Spirit of God, in fullness of the Spirit of God. Now, we have the ability to do that. You can walk one of two ways.

You can walk upside down or right side up. Upside down for a Christian is for your body to tell you everything you're going to do, tell you what you're going to eat, tell you who your friends are, tell you where you're going to go, tell you what you're going to listen to, what you're going to watch.

That's an upside down person. Your flesh tells everything, and you yield to it because you're weak.

The way God designed man to be is for the Spirit to control everything, and for the

Holy Spirit to be in union with your own spirit, like one, so that it becomes one spirit.

That's talked about in 1 Corinthians. And then for the Spirit to control the soul, which then controls the body, and the body then becomes a slave to the spiritual you, which wants to follow

God, so that body cannot sin. The body can't sin anyway, only if you consider the mind to be part of the body, which it really is.

Because sin happens in the mind first. And if that mind is being operated upside down from the ground up, where your flesh is telling you everything you want to do, and the urges of your selfish flesh run your life, then every temptation is a danger to you, because the flesh just goes after it.

But if you're a right side up Christian, and you have God at the head of your life, and your spirit is with Him as one, then you're strong in the

Lord, and that leads your whole self, leads your soul, which then causes your body to fall in line and be the servant that the body's supposed to be.

Did you realize that your body has one purpose, and that is to allow

God to work in the physical world? God is a spiritual God, and for Him to work in a physical world,

He will work in your body. So your body is a servant. The Bible says, don't you know that you were bought with a price, and therefore you are not your own?

You know, boy, if Jesus died for you, and you've been redeemed, that means bought from a slave market of sin and set free to serve

God, then you're not your own. And this body of all parts of you, you have three parts, a spirit, a soul, and a body.

And your body is the most of the servants. It's the lowest form of yourself.

It should be the ultimate servant, and it should serve everything your soul wants it to do, which should do everything your spirit wants it to do, which should do everything the spirit of God wants it to do, which means you won't sin.

That's the right side up person. You turn that upside down, and it goes and starts with your dirty feet on the ground.

Dirty feet picturing you're walking in this world that is governed by Satan in some ways.

He's the little G God of this world. God has put him in a place where he's supposed to do this, because the world has been cursed.

You don't just go out and plant a crop and have it just shoot up and flourish.

It's got thorns and thistles and cuckleburs and sometimes a drought, and the whole thing is killed, and that's the way it is in this world, because it's cursed.

And Satan runs to and fro down here. From his viewpoint, he thinks he's in complete control.

He doesn't realize he's a pawn of God, but the thing is, if you're running from the ground up and your dirty feet are in that ground and then that body of yours controls everything you do, you're just living in sin.

That's all you can do. You don't have a choice. You're just living in sin. It seems like you don't, but if you're born again, you do have a choice, and the choice is to go to the

Lord and say, Lord, please forgive me and cleanse me. Cleanse my dirty feet, pictured by Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, of course.

Cleanse my dirty feet, put my life back in right order, and help me walk with you, because I know that if you're in control, then my body will be under submission, and I won't sin.

Well, Satan attempts to bring this to Jesus as if Jesus were a man in the flesh, in the bad sense of the word, as if Jesus were controlled by his own body.

Well, Jesus already proved he wasn't controlled by his body. He went 40 days without eating. You try that. I'll challenge everybody in the room, try to go three days without eating one thing.

You can drink some juice. We'll allow you some grape juice, even that's sweet. I mean, that'd be a treat.

By that third day, a banana will look like a Milky Way bar. An apple will look like a apple pie with ice cream on top, because you haven't even been able to eat anything, but you try controlling your body so much that you don't eat one thing for three days.

Do you see what it's like by about the ... Actually, it's okay by the third day. It's the first day that's horrible, and starting into that second day is terrible, and about by after lunch, the second day after lunch, that's funny, after lunchtime, you don't get to eat.

After lunchtime, you start to say, well, I'm not thinking about this about as much.

In the third day, what you'll find is when lunchtime comes, since you're not going to eat, you'll start thinking about the

Lord, and every time you have a hunger pain, you'll think about the Lord. Fasting is very effective if you want to draw closer to God.

Why? Because you're drawing further from your body, which the Bible teaches us is an enemy right now.

It's one of our enemies. The flesh is one of our enemies. So Jesus had gone 40 days without eating.

There's no doubt in my mind or yours who was in control. His body was not in control, ever in his life.

He used his body as a tool in this physical world to do

God's will. That's what we're supposed to do, and if we're using it for any other purpose, then we're doing what

Satan was trying to get Jesus to do, we're sinning. So follow how Satan took this approach, because he'll take the same approach in our lives.

He's going to hit us in one of three areas, the flesh, the pride of the eyes, or the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life.

And look at it here, the first one, he says, if you're the son of God, prove it to me.

Command this stone to turn into bread. Well, naturally, Jesus was hungry after 40 days, and Satan just said, well, turn that stone into bread, you can eat it, you'll fulfill the desire of your flesh.

That's how he tempts us. Take this and do this, it'll fulfill the desire of your flesh.

Lust of the flesh. Well, Jesus comes back and quotes scripture to him, and that is a great thing for us to be able to do.

In verse 4, he quoted Deuteronomy 8 .3, if you don't know the scriptures, how can you use them against the enemy when he comes?

If Satan comes to you and tempts you, do you know enough scripture in your heart where you can, the

Holy Spirit can bring a scripture to mind that will free you from his onslaught? The Bible says to resist

Satan, and he will flee from you. And you're going to see at the end of this passage,

Satan flees. He says, for a season he flees. But he does flee, he has to leave.

What do you think it is that made him flee? The word of God, correctly interpreted, correctly used, as Jesus used it.

So here he uses this verse and says that, you know, it's not all about bread, but about the word of God.

Now let's go to verse 5, and let's see the second temptation, and the devil taking him up into the high mountain showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

That's a miracle, isn't it? Satan performed a miraculous thing, he was able to bring before the human eyes of Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world in a moment, like a movie, just a flash that went by.

And so he did this. And the devil said unto him, all power, all this power will

I give thee. Now was it his to give? So when Satan comes to us and says, now if you'll do this little sin here,

I'll supply this for you. Is he really God? No, he's lying.

He can't supply things you really need, he just acts like he can. And he says, so if you'll do this, you know,

I'll give you all this power. Well, it wasn't his to give. 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 whom

I will give it. This is the lust of the eyes. One of the ways Satan can tempt us is through what we see.

We have to be careful in what we let our eyes see, don't we? Because the things we see, he can tempt us if we're in the flesh.

So here he shows Jesus all of the power. I mean, you can be the king of all these nations.

I'll give that to you. Power, glory. Look at it with your eyes. Wouldn't you like to be the king,

Jesus? You know, he thinks he can get Jesus to look and the lust of the eyes will overcome him and he'll sin.

But it didn't happen, did it? Not to the Lord Jesus, because look at verse 7, if thou therefore will worship me, all shall be thine.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, get thee behind me. That's what the Bible means when it says resist

Satan. When you sense that temptation, tell it to leave. Just say, no,

I'm walking with the Lord right now. I'd rather him be pleased with me than for my flesh to get to do this. And he'll flee.

This is how Jesus handled it. Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written.

Now Jesus quotes scripture again. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

He says, I'm not going to worship you. Now listen, does this teach us then that any time we succumb to the lust of the eyes and we sin, that we are worshiping

Satan? It does teach us that. Now we won't feel like that's what we're doing.

We think, well, I'm just doing what I want to do. No, what we're doing is we're worshiping a false god of some kind.

And he brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle, I'm in verse 9, of the temple and said to him, if thou be the son of God, cast thyself down from hence, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee, and in thy hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone.

Now this was a temptation towards the pride of man. Because if you go and examine this passage that is found in Psalm 91 and the entire psalm, you're going to find that this is not even written to the

Messiah. Now there are a lot of psalms that are for views of Jesus, where King David sort of was a type of the

Messiah, wasn't he? By type, I mean he was a symbol. When you look at David in the Old Testament, many times his life symbolizes the coming

Messiah, which was Jesus. In fact, the Bible teaches Jesus will someday sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem and reign in this world for a thousand years.

That's coming soon, we can tell by the news we watch. All of the whole attention of the world is on the

Middle East right now. And as the end times get closer and closer, we're already in the end times, but as the end of time gets closer and closer, you're going to see more and more turmoil out in that area.

And someday Jesus is coming back and he said, if I had not come, there'd be no flesh left on the earth.

I had to cut the days short. So Jesus is coming again, and he's going to set up a throne, and it's going to be on David's throne.

So David is a picture of Jesus many times in the Psalms, but not in Psalm 91. And the way you can tell that is to read the last verse in Psalm 91, it says,

I will bless you with many days and long life. How old was Jesus when he was killed on the cross?

33, would you consider that living a rich old life? No. But David lived a long life, didn't he?

So that's not talking about Jesus. So Satan misquoted this verse. He tried to make a misapplication of the scriptures.

That's how all the cult groups do it. Anybody that wants to lead you down a wrong road in religion, they'll always use the

Bible. Just because they show you two or three Bible verses doesn't mean they're right. You've got to take it upon yourselves to study the

Bible yourselves from Genesis to Revelation and have a picture of the whole of the whole

Bible before you can ever take one little verse out and know if it's true the way they're using it. Because Satan used scripture all through this passage.

But if you knew the whole Bible, you'd know if he's using it right or not. Jesus knew the whole Bible from the age of a young boy.

He was teaching the elders when he was 12 years old. So Satan perhaps was very foolish to try to use the scriptures on Jesus, but he tried.

And he'll try to do that with us. He'll try to lead you down every road down false religion. He'll even call it

Christianity. Mormonism claims to be Christians. And they're the furthest thing from Christians.

Catholicism, the same way. Many cults and little groups and sects that use scripture to try to take you down the wrong road.

And he misapplied a verse in Psalm 91 that's not really even talking about Jesus.

You may even have some commentators that will tell you that it is, but all you've got to do is read verse 16 and you'll see that it's not.

Psalm 91, 16 proves that that's not Jesus. So what Satan is trying to do is appeal to the pride of Jesus and say that, now look, if you can jump off this thing and it not kill you, then you can prove to me that you're

Superman. Do you see that? I mean, that's pride. If I could do that, I'd be prideful. What if I could do that, or you?

People come up and say, whoa, you're the man. That's the pride. It appeals to pride. The problem Satan didn't understand is

Jesus didn't have any. He couldn't be tempted with this. And you cannot either if you walk in the new man.

When you get born again, God gives you some equipment that very few people use. Very few Christians that go to church call themselves

Christians. They just don't use the equipment because they like the flesh so much. And it's not the right way to walk.

Now verse 12, and Jesus answered and said to him, it is said thou shalt not tempt the

Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.

Jesus ended up this by quoting scripture about not tempting the

Lord thy God, which is found in the Old Testament scriptures in Deuteronomy. But there's an interesting place in Exodus 17, verse 2, 3, 6, and 7.

We won't go into it this afternoon for sake of time. But it teaches what tempting God means.

And what it really means is to get your mind to the place where you act as if God's not there.

Now, you know, anytime you sin, you have to act that way. Think about the last sin that you did.

Think about it. You had to trick your mind into thinking God's not there. You can't be with God and fellowship in sin at the same time.

So you just had to pretend he's not there. Well, if you go into Exodus 17, verses 2, 3, 6, and 7, you're going to find out that the nation of Israel was murmuring and complaining and saying, we don't have any food, we don't have any water.

They were acting like God was not there to take care of them. And Moses said, you're tempting God. And you go to the very next chapter, chapter,

I mean, the very next verse, verse 8 begins to talk about Amalek. And if you study the character of Amalek in the

Old Testament, you'll find out he is a type or a picture of the flesh because he is the grandson of Esau in Genesis 36, 12, who according to Galatians 4, 29, was born after the flesh.

So Esau pictures the flesh, so Amalek pictures the flesh. And so when you tempt

God, it means you act like God is not there so that you can then move down into the flesh and try to enjoy it for a few moments because you can't enjoy that if you think

God's watching. So you just have to act like he's not there. Study Exodus 17, see if you don't see that that's true.

The true meaning of to tempt God is to play like he's not there when he is because he's omnipresent, which means he's everywhere all the time watching us.

He can see our heart, he can see our mind, he can see our thoughts. Hear every thought we have, every word, every deed we do, and so forth.

So tempting him is acting like he's not there. And so Jesus comes back to Satan when

Satan tries to tempt Jesus by the flesh, tries to tempt him by the eyes, tries to tempt him by the pride of life, and Jesus finishes him off with this verse, thou shalt not tempt the

Lord thy God. He's letting Satan know, listen, I don't pretend God's not here because God's not only here, he's in total control of my life 100 % of the time.

Now Jesus could say that. The Bible says he was tempted with all points even as we and yet without sin.

It doesn't mean he was tempted on the inside, it means the world presented everything to Jesus that it presents to you, just like Satan tried to tempt him, so did the world.

Everything I mean from billboards with women without clothes on it, everything the world's got.

Everything the world's got, it throws it out there. The beer commercials you're going to see if you watch the Super Bowl, it'd be best just to flip right through the commercials.

If you're going to watch that, everything the world has to throw at you will come to you and try to tempt the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life just like Satan tried to and the only way it can accomplish anything is if you are in the flesh, if you're walking from the ground up rather than from the heavenlies down.

And so Jesus gives us not only a wonderful example but a teaching of how to deal with sin and with the flesh and the only way you can sin is by tempting

God really. That's why when he quoted that verse Satan fled, Satan left the scene when

Jesus said thou shalt not tempt God and Satan left. Because to not tempt

God is to realize he is in my life right now. Well I'm not going to sin as long as I know that.

So there's a good practical lesson on how to avoid sin. Let's stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word.

We ask you to bless it in our hearts even throughout this week as we face temptations in this world that you would call this scripture to our minds and allow us to use this scripture to fight against being in the flesh and Lord help us to be strong in the spirit and the power of your might.

We ask you to give us strength and deliverance from sin that we might walk a walk that's worthy and a testimony that's worthy of who we are in Christ.

And Lord we just pray, Father, if there's one single person, child or adult, teenager or whatever in this room that's not born again that these scriptures you would use in their life and help them to see that the only real life, the only really way to live is to be in Jesus Christ.

And Father go with us as we head our different ways home this afternoon. Give us your protection and bring us back together safely next time in Jesus name, amen.