WWUTT 2292 The Temptation of Jesus (Luke 4:1-4)

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Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. There are three temptations given to us there, and to each of those temptations,

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Jesus responded with scripture, with the written word, and so should we when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wtt .com. Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel of Luke, we're in chapter four now, and we're gonna be reading of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

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We'll study this section for a couple of days. So let me begin by reading verses one through 13.

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Hear the word of the Lord. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the

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Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.

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And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.

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And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.

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And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, to you,

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I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom

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I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours.

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And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

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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, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you and on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

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And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your

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God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time."

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This is Luke's account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. And it can be divided up into four parts.

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We have something of a prologue or a setup here with Jesus going into the wilderness to be tempted.

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And then the next three parts of this narrative are of course divided up into the three temptations. And to each of those temptations,

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Jesus responds with what? He responds with scripture, with the word of God that had already been written down.

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Jesus could have responded with his own words. They were every bit as authoritative and equal to scripture, but he doesn't respond with that.

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He goes back to the ancient scriptures, what God had already said and had been recorded, showing that the

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Lord has already responded to each and every one of these temptations that Satan gives.

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And this is good for us to read this, that we may know the importance of storing up God's word in our hearts so that we may be armed, properly equipped to respond to every one of the devil's temptations in the schemes that he uses to try to draw us away from God, to try to discourage our growth in holiness of drawing near to the

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Lord. So let us understand the importance and the power of all of scripture as we study this together.

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Luke 4, beginning in verse one, we come to this setup of the narrative here with Jesus full of the

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Holy Spirit returning from the Jordan and going into the wilderness. Now, remember, first of all, the last event that we had read, we just studied the genealogy of Jesus as recorded by Luke, it's at the end of chapter three, but that separates out this event from the last one that we read about.

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We've got a genealogy in the middle, but what was the last thing we read of? We read of Jesus being baptized by John the

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Baptist. This is in Luke 3, beginning in verse 21. Now, when all the people were baptized and when

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Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened and the

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Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven saying, you are my beloved son.

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With you, I am well -pleased. So the people are there, those who were baptized by John the

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Baptist, even John himself and Jesus witnessed this great thing with the heavens opening up, the

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Holy Spirit descending upon him and the voice from heaven saying, you are my beloved son.

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Now, for whatever reason, Luke decides to throw a genealogy in here. So we don't go right from that into the temptation narrative.

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We read the genealogy in between, but we keep that in mind as we come to this next part in Luke chapter four.

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Really all things considered, we have finished what is considered to be Luke's introduction to the ministry of Jesus Christ.

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That was chapters one through three. So now that ministry begins. And after Jesus is baptized, he doesn't go right into Jerusalem or into Judea, into like populated areas and begin preaching.

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He instead goes into the wilderness for 40 days and he's fasting and praying and also being tempted for he is being perfected for the ministry and the work that the father is going to have him do.

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So we start this reading that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit because the last event that happened right before Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted is that the

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Holy Spirit descends upon him. He is full of the Holy Spirit and he returns from the Jordan and he's led by the spirit.

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So though he is going into the wilderness to be tempted, first of all, he's going into a wilderness. Next, he's going into the wilderness to fast.

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And in the midst of that fasting, he's gonna be tempted by the devil. We might look at all of these elements as being bad things, but if he's being led by the spirit, it is good.

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And this is ultimately for God's glory so that we may see as the spirit is directing

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Jesus in these things to be tempted. Whenever we go through trials or struggles, whether that's temptation or suffering or just unfavorable circumstances, whatever they may be, we should not think of something bad happening to us in a certain sense.

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We understand that God is with us and he is bearing us up in the midst of these circumstances that we may trust in him, that we in sharing in the sufferings of Christ may be made more like Christ.

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And it causes us to long all the more for heaven in which all these things that we go through in this life will pass away.

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The spirit is with us no matter where we are and the Holy Spirit will equip us and guard us and give us the power to be able to resist these temptations and even turning it into something greater as we are being sanctified and being made more like Christ.

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We share with Christ in his sufferings when we go through these things. So the spirit is leading

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Jesus into the wilderness and he's there for 40 days being tempted by the devil.

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Now, of course, Jesus being tempted in this way, one thing that he experiences in his temptation that we do not is that Jesus is doing this for our sake.

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He is being tempted so that we would have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

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One who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin, that's

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Hebrews 4 .15. So that we have a high priest that relates to us, we have a high priest who even perfects us because as we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we have also been clothed with power to resist temptation and walk in the righteous way because Christ did this for us first.

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So he is even going into the wilderness to be tempted on our behalf for righteousness sake, just as he had said something similar to John the

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Baptist when he was baptized. Now, Luke doesn't record that, of course, that's in Matthew 3. But remember that when

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Jesus was being baptized by John, John would have stopped him from doing it and saying, hey, you need to baptize me.

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And Jesus says, let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

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And so Christ is doing that also with him going into the wilderness and being tempted. This is to fulfill the righteousness that we would be clothed in in Christ Jesus for all who believe in him.

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So this is just verse one here, Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, led by the

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Spirit into the wilderness. And by the way, this is the Judean desert, which is just a little bit to the northwest of the

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Dead Sea, the wilderness of Judea. It is something of a desert. It is occupied by jackals and scorpions and snakes and all other kinds of things.

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You can still tour the wilderness of Judea to this day. I don't know why you would want to, it's barren and desolate.

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Maybe to go there and see, this is the place where Jesus was for over a month, fasting and praying on our behalf and being tempted by Satan.

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There are some that have speculated that maybe Jesus had gone way south down into Sinai so that he might walk in the wilderness like where the

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Israelites wandered. And he would be in that place where Moses himself had fasted for 40 days and the

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Lord took care of him. But there's nothing in the text that indicates that to us. We have already heard it said in Matthew's gospel, in Matthew chapter two, that Jesus being called out of Egypt is the fulfillment of the scriptures that out of Egypt, I have called my son.

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So there's no reason for Jesus to wander down into Sinai and have to fulfill some sort of Israelite type and shadow in that way.

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Just going into the wilderness in Judea was enough because even in Judea, the

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Israelites were not faithful to the Lord. So here is Jesus fulfilling in his faithfulness, everything to the will and the glory of the father.

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Now, all indications are that these temptations come at the end of that 40 days.

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Whether or not Jesus was tempted earlier, like during those other 40 days that he was in the wilderness, were there other temptations that Satan gave to him?

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The text doesn't tell us that. These are the three that are singled out as the most important for us to recognize because they are the temptations that represent the very same temptations that Adam and Eve received in the garden.

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And also it is, as it is said in 1 John 2, 16, all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world.

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And that's what these three temptations are supposed to represent. So that's why we only have these three. If Satan had tempted him in any other ways, we're not given that, but we don't need to know that.

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Christ's faithfulness in these three temptations is sufficient. This is enough.

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So he's hungry as Jesus in his humanity would certainly be.

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He is very God, but he is also man and he is experiencing life as a man.

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And so here after fasting for 40 days, of course he's going to be hungry.

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He was hungry before this, but this is where his hunger and his struggle kind of reaches its apex.

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And in verse three, the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.

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Now think of the very first thing that Satan says here. What is it that everyone heard the father say from heaven at the end of Luke three, everybody heard the voice from heaven that said, you are my beloved son, with you

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I am well pleased. And by everyone, I mean, everybody was there to be baptized by John, John the

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Baptist himself, Jesus of course, when he comes out of the water, they have all heard the voice of the father say, this is my beloved son.

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And so what is Satan's first address to Jesus? If you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.

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It's as if Satan is challenging Jesus confidence. Are you sure you heard that voice?

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Do you believe it? Do you believe the voice that came from heaven and said that you are his beloved son?

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This is much like the way Satan tempted Adam and Eve, isn't it? The serpent saying to Eve, did

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God really say? It's like Satan's doing the same thing here. Did God really say you are the son of God?

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Maybe we should test this out a little bit and find out if you're really his beloved son. So command this stone to become bread.

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And that seems like an innocent enough miracle. What would be the harm in that, of Jesus changing the stone into bread?

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Because the reason why he would do it would be to test the claim of the father saying, you are my beloved son.

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It's as if Jesus is in the wilderness, suffering from hunger and then going, am I really? Am I really the son of God?

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What can I do with this? Let's find out. And then touching the stone and it becomes bread and goes, oh, well, look at that.

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I am God's son. He would not have trusted the voice of the father. Should Jesus have done that though?

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So Jesus responds to him in verse four, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.

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Now, of course, that reference is to Deuteronomy 8. Now in Matthew's gospel, where Matthew records

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Jesus' response to Satan. In Matthew 4, 4, Jesus said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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So Matthew includes more of the verse than Luke does. I don't know why Luke doesn't include more of the verse. Maybe because, you know, maybe it's an editing decision.

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I don't need to include the whole verse, that's enough. Sure, that could be the reason why. But Luke has

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Jesus responding with just simply saying, it is written that man shall not live by bread alone.

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But the implication would be that Jesus is going to trust the word of the father, not whether or not he can actually turn this stone into bread.

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Deuteronomy 8 .2 says, you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness.

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Remember that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus has been in the wilderness for 40 days.

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And as I had pointed this out when we were in Matthew, it is demonstrating how Christ is the fulfillment of all of those things that Israel failed at.

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Jesus is the true Israel. He's the faithful Israel. So once again, Deuteronomy 8 .2,

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you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment or not.

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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 God.

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And that's what Jesus needed to trust. He needed to trust every word that came from the mouth of God.

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And not just hearing the voice of the father at his baptism in Luke 3.

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It's not just exclusively referring to that, although that should certainly be in our minds when we're reading this narrative and we get to this portion in Luke 4, everybody was there.

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They all heard the voice of the father say, this is my beloved son. Jesus heard that from the father.

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He is filled with the Holy Spirit, but Jesus trusts more than just that event and that word.

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He even trusts the written word and what the scriptures have said about him.

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What was spoken of by the prophets and have been written down in scripture,

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Jesus trusts to know that he is indeed the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

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Which is why when Jesus responds to Satan, he doesn't just point to his own word, although he could have because he is the son of God, but he points to that which has been written.

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It is written, Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone.

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And we'll get to the next two temptations tomorrow with Jesus being shown all the kingdoms of the world and then

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Satan taking him to the pinnacle of the temple and saying, throw yourself down, let his angels deliver you up concerning you.

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Once again, what we need to draw from this, the most readily obvious application for us is the importance of knowing

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God's word. Having it in our hearts, trusting in that word and using that word to respond to any temptation that we may face, whether that would be the schemes of the devil, whether it's the passions in our own flesh, whether it's the ways of this world.

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Whenever we are faced with temptation, we go back to God's word.

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It is filling our minds, it is filling our hearts so that it may be the very thing that guides our steps.

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So that all that we would say and do would be to glory and honor God who is in heaven.

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Remember God's word. Remember, as it said in 2 Corinthians 10, that we would take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

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Or in 1 John 2 .6, that if we say that we follow him, that we ought to walk in the way that Jesus walked.

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Or in Romans 12 .1, I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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And any other passages that tell us about fleeing from sin and doing what is righteous and holy,

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Colossians 3 .5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry.

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On account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. But now you must put them all away.

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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Don't lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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Passages even such as this that would guide our thinking and our steps, that would shape our conscience so that when faced with temptation, we know immediately there's something wrong with this.

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I know that this is not right. It is not good for me to do this. It would not be honoring of God. And we would turn from it to Christ and walk in holiness.

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Don't be flippant about sin. Don't be glib because sin is the reason we die.

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Sin is the reason why everything in this world has become as chaotic as it is.

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So we shouldn't just toy with sin and think that we can innocently dabble in it. Turn from sin to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Be holy as he is holy. Heavenly father, we thank you for your word.

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Thank you for speaking these things to us, that we may know the way that we should go, that we may know our sin and need for a savior and that Christ is that savior.

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And then in light of believing in Jesus Christ, how should we now live?

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And we have your word that gives us those instructions. So let us rely on this constantly. May it be on our minds and in our hearts that we may be conformed all the more to Christ our savior.

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And it's in Jesus name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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