‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
105th teaching
3.30.2015
“the Temptations of
Christ”
part II
Luke 4:1-13
“Then
Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led
by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil.
And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended He was
hungry. And the devil said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command this
stone to become bread.’ But Jesus answered him, saying, ‘It is written, Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’
“Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, ‘All this
authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me,
and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all
will be Yours.’ And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! For
it is written, You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall
serve.’
“Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, 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 shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you,
and, In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a
stone.’ And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘It has been said, You shall not
tempt the LORD your God.’ Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he
departed from Him until an opportune time.”
Last week we began chapter four of
Luke’s gospel with a study we entitled: “the Temptation of Christ”. Since we
didn’t finish this section, we have before us tonight “the Temptation of
Christ, part II”.
What we noticed last week was that the
first thing to happen once Jesus was baptized and His public ministry
officially began was that He was led into the wilderness by the Spirit and that
He was tempted for forty days, it says, by the devil. You can be sure that
before there is any great work of God, there will be a great attack by Satan. I
mean we’re talking about a being that we hardly understand except that he is whole-heartedly opposed to any good thing that
God would desire to do in and through His church.
I thought it was interesting what my
wife pointed out that Jesus was tempted for forty days but we’re only told of
three actual temptations. Likely, these temptations were recurring over and
over again during that forty day period. Isn’t that exactly what temptation is
like for you and I? You can say “no” once, maybe even easily, but then you’re
confronted with the same temptation again and again, and maybe it doesn’t get
any easier saying “no”.
But however they occurred, this
passage lists three temptations for us. We studied the first of the three last
week: the temptation to turn a stone into bread, for Jesus to abuse His divine
powers to feed His flesh and serve Himself, when He was sent specifically to
serve others and give His life, rather than seek to satisfy Himself.
Jesus, of course, fought back. We
noted that He fought back not with divine omnipotence inaccessible to us as
ordinary men and women, but He fought back with a weapon completely accessible
to you and I as ordinary men and women. He fought back with the Word of God.
That’s it? That’s it. Like so many
things in Christianity, there is depth enough to satisfy the brightest minds
and yet simplicity enough to teach it to children. Faith is simple. Trust is
simple. Hope is simple. As simple as that seems, standing upon the Word of God
vanquished the devil and denounced the temptation.
Psalm
119:9 says this: “How can a young man
cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.” The psalmist asks
the question: How do I be holy? How can I live a godly life? How can I say “no”
to temptation? How can I cleanse me way? By listening to and paying attention
to God’s Word. That’s different than just hearing the words.
It’s easy to come in here every Sunday
or Monday or Wednesday, whatever, and be people hearing without listening. But
the Word of God must be listened to.
It must be paid attention to. That
means you do what it says. You apply what you hear. You, literally, take it to
heart.
A few verses down in v.11 of the same psalm it reads: “Your word have I hidden in my heart, that I
might not sin against You.” That means that this Word is listened to, paid
attention to, and it ends up in your heart. It’s not enough that it ends up in
your mind in coldly memorized liturgy and doctrinal statements. It must go as
deep as the emotional core of a human being, trusted in with all the deepest
and simplest conviction of a child.
In light of what we’re seeing with
Christ’s temptations, this makes sense. We cannot assume that Jesus took a copy
of the Bible with Him into the wilderness, can we? First of all, personal
copies of the Scriptures would be extremely uncommon in those days unless you
were extremely wealthy, and we have no reason to think that Jesus’ family under
Joseph’s simple carpentry business was wealthy. Secondly, you couldn’t carry
around compact editions of the Scriptures like we do today in little printed
books. Copies of the Old Testament back then took the form of huge, cumbersome
and delicate scrolls that had to be painstakingly rolled up. I seriously doubt
any suggestion that when Jesus quoted the phrase “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” that
He had a physical copy of the book of Deuteronomy open in His lap.
What does this tell us? That Jesus
knew the Word and He knew them well. Jesus could quote it from memory. That
means that He, as a human being, had to study it, had to spend time in it, had
to become an expert of it, had to know how and when to apply it. And He did all
that without the modern conveniences of the printed letter and the search
engine.
The travesty of the modern world is
how unlikely it is that we could quote something out of Deuteronomy, of all
places, even though we have greater and quicker access to the Scriptures than
anyone in Jesus time did (Jesus included)!
If we want to be like Jesus, if we
want to be prepared to fight against the devil, if we want to say “no” to
temptations that can destroy us, then we must
become experts of the Word of God. We must know this weapon in and out, like
the back of our hand. We must know it as if we lived not by bread alone but really by every word of God. Come to
this book and come to it often, regularly, for life. It is sustenance for your spirits.
It is easy for us to feed our flesh.
In fact, we feed it all the time, every day, multiple times a day. There’s
breakfast, lunch and dinner, then for the hobbits inside of us (aka Americans)
there’s midnight snacks, second breakfast, elevenses and supper and especially
desert. But how often do we feed our spirits? How often to be have a buffet of
the Bible? How often do we saturate ourselves with Scripture? Once or twice a
week, maybe a handful of times, and we may even find it difficult to sit
through and hour or so of intense Bible study. But listen, if you want to live
as a Christian, you’ve got to eat the life-sustaining food of the Christian:
the Word of Life. This is how the Christian lives and survives and thrives by “every word of God”.
So the first temptation was to turn
stone into bread, which tested whether Jesus would abuse His divine powers and
feed His flesh, and Jesus fought back by replying that His sustenance, His
food, was the word of God.
Now the second temptation…
v.5-7
It says the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a
moment of time. Imagine that the devil even showed him kingdoms of the future,
whole empires and nations that had not yet arisen. That represents the devil’s
domain for Satan is called elsewhere “the
god [lower case ‘g’] of this age”.
That’s the words of Paul in II
Corinthians 4:4. Even Jesus Himself later called Satan the “ruler of this world” in John 12:31.
When we look around and consider the
woes of the world, the corruption of human government, the starvation and
pestilence, the vast immorality, the widespread acceptance of evil in place of
good, the insufferable unfairness, the indifferent violence even of nature, the
success of false religion, the fascination of men with demons, and the
unwillingness of humanity to see to the truth, we are reminded that the great
influencer of this present time is the devil himself. Oh we may never see the
devil, but we see his handiwork all the time. Read any newspaper. Read about
the woman who tortured her child by feeding him salt until he died, or about
the man who shot and mutilated his whole family, or about the threats of
foreign nations to wipe out every last man, woman and child in Israel, and it’s
no small wonder that there is a devil behind it all, encouraging man’s deepest
debauchery and grievous sin. This is our Father’s world by means of creation,
but right now, Earth is the devil’s playground.
We’re living in behind enemy lines.
There are no reinforcements coming. There will be no relieving of your guard.
You will die here, unless the Lord of Hosts ends the war before your time is
over. But right now, pack up and check your equipment, because this is enemy
territory.
Satan was right, even among his lies.
The dominion of this world belongs to him and he can give it to anyone, even directly
to Jesus in this moment of time. Note, then, what the temptation is: it is to
gain all the power and authority and establish His kingdom on earth without
having to go to the cross. In Revelation
11:15, voices cry out at the end of this age: “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of
His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.”
This temptation means skipping the cross
and grabbing the crown. It means taking humanity back from the power of Satan
without having to feel any pain, without having to undergo the torture, the
touch of the whips, the licks of the scourges, without having to feel the stabs
of the thorns, without having to bear up the tremendous weight of that terrible
wooden beam, without having to face the nails, without having to shed a single
drop of blood. All Jesus had to do was turn His back on His Father, the Father
who would be pleased to bruise His own Son, as Isaiah foretold, the Father who
purposed that His Son should suffer before entering His glorious reign.
The devil was offering it all to
Jesus. He could simply take a shortcut, a far, far less agonizing path than the
road to the crucifixion. Thus even before Jesus had spoken a word in His public
ministry, the devil played his strongest card to try to get the Son of God to
turn away from the cross. He was offering Jesus a way out.
And all Jesus had to do was sign the
dotted line. All Jesus had to do (and I’m sure the devil sounded like an
incredibly good salesman) was bow down and worship the Enemy of His Father. All
He had to do was change the tune of the song He had sung since everlasting,
trade the praise of His Father for the momentary praise of His Enemy.
Imagine what kind of a world we would
be living in today if the Son of God had taken that offer. Imagine living in a
world so full of immoral sickness and Satanism. I wonder if the human race
wouldn’t have already gone extinct. There would certainly be no Christianity,
no church, no Bible, no hope of heaven. If Jesus accepted this offer, our fate
would have been sealed.
Satan says “You can have it all, just
worship me and don’t worry about that dirty, old cross!”
This is a powerful temptation. I Corinthians 10:13 says “No temptation has overtaken you except what
is common to man. And God is
faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able…”
In other words, there’s a gauge on the temptations that are allowed to come our
way. Whether we face easy, normal, expert or extreme mode temptations, realize
that what you’re allowed to face in your life is what God has pre-determined
for you to face, knowing that what you’re allowed to face is something that you
can actually handle, because He won’t allow you to face anything that you can’t
actually handle.
Now what does that say about the
character of Jesus Christ? This is certainly one of the most powerful
temptations in the Bible. It is right up there with being tempted to eat the
forbidden fruit so that you can be like God, O Adam and Eve. But could you
imagine the intensity of such a temptation that promises limitless human
government, all the authority of earthly power, receiving all the kingdoms of
the world, literally ruling the entire earth. Nobody has ever been tempted with
such a thing! What a powerful temptation for the Son of God!
And yet notice His equally powerful
response.
v.8
“Get
behind Me, Satan!” I like that. He treats him like a dog, like a naughty
child. “Get behind Me! Don’t you know Who you’re talking to?” Jesus resists the
devil and the devil will indeed flee, just as we are recommended to resist the
Enemy in James 4:7.
And once again Jesus quotes from
Scripture as the basis for denying this temptation, and notice as His basis for
making this ethical decision. You got some decisions to make, some hard
decisions, make sure you run them by the Word. And He quotes again from the
book of Deuteronomy by saying that
Lord God alone is to be worshiped. It may have been easier or more convenient
to just go ahead and bow down before the devil and deny the cross. It would
certainly have been less painful. But it was wrong. It was easier, but it was
against everything that Jesus knew to be right.
There’s an example we could stand to
live by: for how often do you and I make our decisions based on how easy they
are or how convenient they seem, rather than take that decision and filter it
through the will of God? How often do we go and do this or that, even on a
whim, without a second thought about what our Father would have us do, or
whether what we’re doing is even right or not, whether it is pleasing or
grieving to the Holy Spirit inside of us?
Listen carefully, there’s much to be
gained from cheating and lying. Lying works! You can climb the ladder of
society pretty high by stepping on people’s backs and throats. You can get a
lot for yourself through seedy company and less than honorable methods. You can
satisfy your flesh at every moment and then cover it up. No one would be the
wiser. But you’ll find eventually that you’ve reached the top only to share a
bed with the devil. You can rule the world, but you’ve got to worship the
devil.
Sometimes the right thing isn’t the
easiest thing or the most convenient thing. Sometimes it isn’t the thing that
works the best or is the most practical or saves the most time and energy, but
that doesn’t change the fact that God hates wickedness and loves righteousness.
To worship the Lord God alone rather
than to prostrate yourself before the devil like the rest of the world may not
be the most popular thing. It may not be the most convenient thing to wake up
on time on Sundays. It may not be the easiest thing to make it here every
Monday night to seek the Lord and learn of Him. It may not seem to be the
practical use of your time to read your Bibles on your own and close your eyes
for prayer when you’re busy with work and education. But these are the right
things to do.
So the first temptation: turn stone
into bread, tested whether Jesus would abuse His divine powers and feed His
flesh, and Jesus fought back by replying that His sustenance, His food, was the
word of God.
The second temptation: worship Satan
and rule the world. This tested Christ’s resolve to go to the cross and it
tested His faithfulness to His Father. It was a temptation to break the first
commandment of them all and replace God the Father with the god of this age. Jesus
fought back by replying that the Lord God alone is to be worshiped and served.
Now the third temptation…
v.9-11
Ah notice, ladies and gentlemen,
that the devil is a Bible expert, too. He too can quote Scripture. He too can
say “for it is written”. Now here’s a
mind-blowing thought: is Satan more of a biblical scholar than you are? Does
the Enemy know more about the Word of God than you do, you in whom the very
Author of the Bible dwells? Can the devil quote Scripture more readily and more
easily than you? Do you struggle with that sort of thing? Do you fumble your
way around these words of life, while all the time your Adversary is laughing at
your novice attempts and has only to throw at you this verse or that verse to
cause your whole line of reasoning to come tumbling down?
Let’s not let the devil be a better
student of the Bible than we are. That’s just flat out embarrassing. It’s
shameful. It’s sad that a cultist or an occultist, that an atheist, that
someone whose only god is Satan knows this Book better than we, the People of the
Book. Know your Bibles, guys and girls, because the devil knows his. If you
don’t, he can certainly use even the word of God to confuse you and drag you
down into a pit of isolation and despair.
Pastor David Guzik writes: “The sad
truth is that many people today will accept anyone who quotes a Bible verse as
teaching God’s truth, but the mere use of Bible words does not necessarily
convey the will of God.”
If the devil can quote Scripture, then
so can false teachers. You watch out for them because they are everywhere. Now
I’ve learned a lot of things from the X-Files,
because it was a super-great series. It’s my favorite documentary. But one of
the catch phrases of the X-Files,
with all of the government conspiracies, secret assassins, shifting allegiances
and lies within lies was “Trust No One”. Those were the last words of Agent
Mulder’s first mentor: “Trust No One”.
Now obviously the Christian version is
“Trust No One but God”, because we know that God will not deceive you. God
cannot lie. It’s actually impossible for God to lie. But people masquerading as
people of God or as preachers of God’s Word, so-called and self-proclaimed
prophets or healers, can indeed lie. And they can even use the Word of God to
perpetuate and attempt to validate their lies. So watch out. Trust no one
except for God. Test everything you hear from any source by what you read in God’s own words, because many
people, like the devil, can use these words to spruce up their lies.
What the devil quotes is actual
Scripture indeed. These are citations from Psalm
91, so let’s be good students and go and look at this source. Turn to Psalm 91 and read it.
Now obviously this psalm is indeed
about God protecting the one who is dwelling in His presence. But does the
psalmist anywhere in this whole poem suggest that a person should put
themselves in a situation where God is forced to protect them? Does the
psalmist prescribe that someone should test these words by specifically putting
themselves at risk just so that God will come to their rescue? No, it’s quite
the opposite. What you find in Psalm 91
is a relationship of love where the psalmist relies upon the Lord and the Lord
protects him. You don’t find the psalmist sort of “daring” God to act, or
abusing and testing God’s words to him to really find out if they were true.
The psalmist is not saying in any way, with a wry grin: “God, if you really
love me, then you’ll get me out of this one!”
Thus the devil was quoting real
Scripture, indeed, but he was quoting it out of context, out of its original
meaning. And that’s a great way to come up with some bad theology, some bad
doctrines, some bad beliefs, aka heresy. Know your Bible and know the context,
otherwise you’ll get tricked into all kinds of harmful, dangerous, dishonest
and ungodly applications of this Book. Like any weapon, the Bible and it’s
context can be abused.
II
Timothy 2:15 defines a student of the Bible as one who can correctly
handle, rightly divide the Word of truth. That means a Bible student can look
at a passage and recognize that this goes here and that goes there, that this
matches up with what this other verse says, that this means that based on what
has already been said, and so on. A student of the Bible knows how to properly
handle this weapon.
The devil’s third temptation then was
for Jesus to put His Father to the test. Thus he returns to the phrase “If you are the Son of God…”. “If you
really are who you think you are, then put your Father to the test. Doesn’t the
Scripture say that He will protect you from harm? Why not try it out? Throw
yourself off the temple pinnacle and you won’t fall to your death. And what a
spectacle that would be! Everyone would see you. Everyone would recognize you
for who you are! And you would be safe!”
Note that there’s a subtext to this
temptation. The subtext is safety. It’s the idea that Jesus Christ could be
safe. It’s the idea that His Father would protect Him from anything, if indeed
He was the Son of God. But that’s contrary to the express purpose for which God
the Son came into the world, to be born with a body that could suffer, to take
on flesh that could bleed. He came not to be safe, not to be cuddled forever in
the bosom of Mary or to live in comfort forever in Galilee. He came to die. And
nothing, not even His Father’s hand, would save Him from that great and
terrible destiny. On the contrary, it was the Father’s will that He do just
that and go to that rugged cross.
Jesus of course answers the tempter
rightly.
v.12
He quotes for the third time from the
book of Deuteronomy. Apparently, Jesus quoted from the book of Deuteronomy more
than any other book of the Old Testament except for the book of Psalms. He
placed great value on a book which we often skip, if even we have ever read it
at all.
But Jesus recognized immediately what
the devil was doing with quoting Psalm
91 because evidently, Jesus knew that psalm too. Therefore He was able to
respond and point out that what Satan had done was incorrectly take the text to
mean that He should put the Father to the test.
With each temptation, Jesus responded
with the Word of God, ah but let us not forget a key element in Christ’s own
defense against temptation. Let’s not forget that He first went into that
wilderness full of the Holy Spirit. He had the Word of God, indeed, but He did
not have the Word alone in some kind of proud, intellectual way. Neither did He
have the Spirit alone with all the passion and explosive joy we see caricatured
in some Christian circles today. He had a fusion of the Word and the Spirit,
two key elements for the Christian life, brought together.
v.13
The devil fled. Though the mark of
Satan’s realm would still be present during Jesus’ ministry, since Christ would
come across the many demon-possessed people that He would later cure, the devil
left Him, it says, “until an opportune
time.”
My question for you, in closing, is
this: When was that opportune time? When did the devil finally seize the
opportunity again and swoop in for the kill?
John
13:21-30 is one of the most chilling passages in all the gospels. Let’s
turn there and see.
It says that Satan entered into Judas
Iscariot and he went out to betray Christ, and it was night. Darkness had
fallen on the land. Darkness had fallen over the soul of this lost disciple. Satan
had taken the opportunity. The opportune time had come. Oh Satan was looking
forward to the cross, too, but in a much different way than Christ. Satan was
looking forward to pouring out all the pent up jealousy and hatred of the Jews
and all the unbridled savagery and violence of the Romans upon the Son of God
to destroy Him.
But what Satan didn’t know was that
when he seized this opportune time (when he entered into Judas and motivated
him to betray the Lord) that he was sending the Son of God to the very place
that wouldn’t destroy Jesus, for the cross was the very place where the devil
himself was destroyed and defeated. Hebrews
2:14 says that Jesus “through death”
destroyed “the one who has the power of
death, that is, the devil.”
That’s quite a trick played on the
prince of tricksters. The devil himself played a part in setting up the events
that would lead to his own destruction. He possessed Judas to betray Christ to
the cross, but it was at the cross that the one who possessed Judas was defeated.
In the murder of Jesus, the great Murderer was overcome, overpowered and
overwhelmed. Popular culture often depicts the devil as cunning and clever, but
don’t forget that God is far more cunning and far, far cleverer. The devil
never saw it coming.
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