Luke 4:1-13
Please turn in your copies of
the scriptures to Luke’s gospel chapter four. Today’s reading
and preaching is from verses one through 13. These are the
account of the temptation of the Lord Jesus. We remember that
our Lord is being prepared for his public ministry as the recreator
and the redeemer of all things, and that the Holy Spirit has
been upon him. He has been conceived by the Holy Ghost. He has grown
in wisdom and stature with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit led him out into the wilderness. We’ll see in just
a moment. But last we looked, he was baptized and the Heavenly
Father descended with a dove. And the voice from heaven also
said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.
And now we see the Lord Jesus put to the test. And in a real
sense, if this were a, maybe a cartoon like you watched growing
up or one of those movies where the narrator would say, and now
everything hangs in the balance. We understand that if Jesus doesn’t
pass this test of temptation, then he cannot be the redeemer
of God’s people. And so we understand the weight
and the gravity of Satan’s temptation, but Jesus’ perfect obedience.
Hear now God’s word. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit,
returned from the Jordan. He was led by the Spirit in the
wilderness for 40 days and being tempted by the devil. And he
ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he
was hungry. And the devil said to him, if you are the son of
God, command the stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him,
it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. And the
devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world
in a moment of time. And he said to him, to you, I
will give all this authority in their glory for it has been
delivered to me and I will give it to whom I will. If you then
will worship me, it will be all yours. And Jesus answered, it
is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only
shall you serve. 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. And Jesus
answered him, He said, it is said, you shall not put the Lord
your God to the test. And when the devil had ended
every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Let us pray together. Our Lord
and God, we recognize that we need your word. It is the true
bread from heaven that can sustain us and can see us through. We
remember the words of Psalm 1, blessed is the one who does not
sit or walk or stand in the way of sinners or the wicked. But
we want to be like the one who is planted by streams of living
water, who live righteously and flourish. Lord, we can only do
that by your word. So now as we turn to your word,
may we turn to it like Jesus has done, recognizing its authority,
its wisdom, wisdom, its place in our lives and its usefulness. to tell the devil to go away,
to leave us alone and let us continue in our obedience as
your children. Lord, we need your help, your
grace. We need your blessing and we need your wisdom. We need
your Holy Spirit. So give it now. We do ask for
it in the strong name of Jesus and all God’s people said, amen. Have you ever seen someone do
something and afterwards say, boy, I wish I could do that.
Maybe it’s been an athlete and you said, boy, I wish I could
throw a football or dunk a basketball or run a race. Or maybe you’ve
seen someone succeed in business and you say, boy, I wish I sure
could make some money that way. Or you’ve seen an actress portray
a character or a singer perform a song. And you’ve seen some
level of success and said, boy, I sure wish I could do that. Well, you come to a passage like
Luke chapter 4, verses 1 through 13, and at least as a Christian,
at least as a saint of God struggling, every one of us should say, boy,
I wish I could tell the devil to buzz off like Jesus did. I wish I could send him away
with a word, with the scripture and with the living word. I wish
I could resist the devil like Jesus. I want us to understand
this day, dear brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, that because
of the work of Christ, because of what he has done, and at least
in our sequential order of the scriptures, what he is about
to do, but what he has done and what he has really done in real
space and time and human and salvation history, we are able
to resist the devil. And Jesus is our great example. He is our great big brother in
the faith. And he has resisted the devil.
And the devil did flee. As we look at the fourth chapter
of Luke today, I want us to think all the way back into the days
of creation. And remember back into the book
of Genesis, when God made the world and everything in it, he
took what was formless and void and he formed it and he filled
it. And he made man out of the dust
of the earth. He formed a help me for that
man out of his own rib. And he put the created beings,
he put Adam and Eve into the garden to work and keep it. But
God also in the heavenly places made these created beings, these
special beings, these angels to serve him and to do his bidding. And there was an angel we now
know as Satan named Lucifer, who was an angel of light. And
it just wasn’t good enough for Satan to serve the living and
true God. It wasn’t enough for him to realize
I have been made for a special purpose and I have been put into
the service of the great master and king and ruler of all the
universe, the God of heaven, the God of earth, the God of
eternity. It’s not enough. And so. Satan
fell, he sinned against God and decided he would set up his own
kingdom where he would attempt to overthrow God and his rule
and his government of peace and love and joy and to set up a
kingdom, not of light, but of darkness, a kingdom, not of heaven,
but of this world. And so the story of redemption,
the story of the Bible is a cosmic battle. It’s a cosmic battle
between the seed of Adam and Eve and the seed of the serpent,
struggling and fighting. And God made a promise, you remember,
to Eve after sin and the garden. He will nip at your heel, but
you will crush his head. And so the story of the Bible
is often a picture, you might say, of Satan nipping at the
heels of God’s children. But the story will end with Satan
crushed, crushed by the head, crushed in the head by the foot
of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we consider this passage,
as we consider the devil, we must remember what Martin Luther
said so well. He is God’s devil. He is on a
chain, if you will. told some of y’all the story
of how our family near our family’s furniture business, the warehouses
where the furniture was kept. When I was a young kid, we’d
ride through there and there would be a Doberman pincher on a chain and that chain
was attached to a post in the ground. And anytime that dog
would run, the chain would stop him at a point. He could only
go so far. And that, my friends, is what the devil is like. He
is God’s devil. He is on a chain. And there is
a post firmly fixed in the providence and rule of God. And the devil
can only go so far. He is God’s devil. He is on a
chain, and this devil is for the glory of God. And we see
places in scripture, like for instance, the story of Job, where
Job asked God’s, or the devil asked God’s permission. Let me
touch your servant, Job. I bet you he won’t serve you
anymore if you take away his riches, take away his family,
take away his grapes, his grandkids, his olive trees, and his wineries.
God says, fine, only don’t take his life. You see, he is God’s
devil and God has him on a chain. He is under the providence and
the power of almighty God. And we remember that this devil,
God’s devil, he entered the garden. He entered paradise. He entered the place where Adam
and Eve had full fellowship with God, full joy. They were happy
and holy. And he entered the garden and
he tempted our first parents by deceiving them. to eat from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to eat the forbidden
fruit. And Adam and Eve in that, that
moment, they failed the probation that we often speak of from Genesis
2 17, where God says to Adam and Eve, you can eat from all
the trees of the garden, except from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. You shall not eat from it for in the day you
eat of it, you will surely die. And we understand from our theologians
and our Bible interpreters that in, In some way, God was testing
Adam. And Adam, if he had remained
happy and holy and submissive and trusting and faithful to
God and obeyed God perfectly, not eating from that tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, he could have then eaten from
the tree of life and live forever. But as it was, we know that Satan
Satan entered that garden and tempted Adam and Eve, and they
failed that divine probation. And God brought curses. He brought
curses on the woman. It’ll be hard to be married.
It’ll be difficult to bear children. He cursed the man. You will have
thorns and thistles in your work. By the sweat of your brow and
by the pain of work, you will strive, and yet the earth will
not give forth the fruit as it did so in Eden. God cursed creation. We know from Romans chapter eight
that all creation eagerly awaits the adoption of the sons and
daughters of men, for it too is under the great curse. But
God also cursed Satan. He cursed him and said, you will
crawl on your belly. You will eat the dust and you will nip
at the children of God’s heels. But one day the great child,
the Messiah will crush your head. We have in the early chapters
of Genesis, what we call the first gospel, the Proto-Evangelion,
the great prophecy of a cosmic battle where God says, I will
put enmity between you speaking to Satan and the woman. And between your offspring and
her offspring, he shall bruise your head, but you shall only
bruise his heel. And so dear brothers and sisters,
the story of the Bible, the story of Luke chapter four is a grand
story. It is one story. And it is a
story of sin and darkness. Yet a Savior, Jesus Christ. And
in chapter four, we see the fitting of the Savior to be the redeemer
of God’s holy people. Satan throughout the Bible nips
and nips and nips and nips at the heels of the people. But
one day Jesus will come and crush the serpent’s head. We’ve seen
Satan throughout the Bible nipping at the heels of people. He nipped
at Cain. He killed his brother Abel. We see the story of Jacob
and Esau where Esau sells his birthright but for a bowl of
soup. And the Tower of Babel and King
Saul and his wickedness, David and his love for other women.
We see Solomon and his many wives and concubines. And we see pain
from the fall in the sins of individuals. But we see the pain
from the fall in the church. Israel was a son of God. Yet Israel, the Bible tells us,
was an unfaithful son. And so it took the coming of
a faithful one, even Jesus, to be the true son of Israel. For
Jesus was not a whiner. He was not an idolater. He was
not disobedient, but he was faithful when God’s people were not. Dear
friends, Satan is a heel nipper. He is a heel nipper and he will
win some battles. He will win some skirmishes,
but he will lose the war. He will lose the war ultimately.
He will lose the grand battle. At Easter time, we often sing
from our hymnal, the great song, sing choirs of new Jerusalem.
And it has this wonderful phrase, for Judah’s lion has burst his
chains and crushed the serpent’s head. Christ cries aloud through
death’s dark domains to wake the imprisoned dead. But you
see now, Satan has Jesus, not in a garden of paradise, but
in a desert. And Satan, you have to understand,
in his mind, sees Jesus as the ultimate prize. If I can get
Jesus, there’s no redemption. If I can get Jesus, there’s no
redeemer. And if I can get Jesus, there will be no redeemed ones.
And what I did back in the garden when I tempted Adam and Eve and
they ate and they plunged all humanity into sin and darkness,
And futility and failure, it will continue for Jesus is the
only one. He is the only seed of the woman
Eve who can beat me. And Satan has before him in the
wilderness, his ultimate prize, Jesus, the son of God, Jesus,
the seed of Eve, Jesus, the appointed one, the Messiah, the king of
kings, the son of David. Everything hinges now on this
very moment. And our text tells us Jesus was
led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. You imagine Jesus
as he sat there many days in prayer and fasting, relying on
the Lord, trusting on him, looking ahead to his earthly mediatorial
ministry of saving his people from their sins. He had probably
seen a lot of snakes, but the great snake has now entered the
wilderness. And yet the hand of God is on
Jesus as he fasts and as he prays, and God has been providing for
him and being a good father to him. But we have to understand
here that Jesus’ test is not like Adam’s test, for Jesus’
test comes in the wilderness. It does not come in paradise
with a river flowing through the middle with precious stones
and beauty and green luscious fruit bearing plants all around.
It comes in the dry, dark, rainless, waterless, lonely wilderness. Jesus is alone. He does not have
a helper fit for him like Adam had in Eve. Jesus does not have
a daily walk with God the Father. For he is there, he is alone,
he’s eating nothing. Whereas Adam, our first parent,
had every tree of the garden. Jesus is being tempted by the
devil. That’s how the beginning of our passage states it. And
when that temptation is ended, every temptation ended, our passage
ends. Jesus in the wilderness, not
in paradise. Jesus, the second Adam, who will
obey God perfectly. is in very different circumstances
than our first Adam, who did not obey God perfectly, but broke
his law and plunged us all into sin and guilt and futility and
failure. Here Jesus sits being deceived
by the devil, being under the sinister work of the devil who
does not want a people redeemed for the glory of God and for
the evangelism of the nations. This is the prince of this world.
And he realizes I’m about to lose everything. in my kingdom
if I can’t get a hold of Jesus. And so the prince of the world
realizes he is about to lose every captive soul for a ransom
is soon to be paid. And he says in his mind, with
all the fierce anger and wrath that this little serpent can
muster, he says, I must stop this. And he comes to Jesus and
he gives him three tests. Maybe there were other tests.
Maybe there were other temptations. It was no doubt a long period
of temptation. More would come. Jesus and his
humanity would experience everything common to man. We have a high
priest, Hebrews tells us, who can sympathize with us. He has
been tempted in every way. But here we have these three
specific temptations. The first one, he’s hungry. And
Satan says to him, turn these stones into bread if you’re the
son of God. when your tummy’s aching, when
you’re like Esau and you’ve come in from a hunt, or when you’re
like blind old Isaac and you just want a good bowl of stew,
spiritual things go out the door and we’ll take a 99 cent can
of Campbell’s Chunky. That’s how we are when we look
at the world, not with spiritual eyes and not with a spiritual
tummy looking for the bread that is from heaven, but we’ll just
take anything and we will eat it and we will devour it even
to our own peril. And here Jesus sits in the wilderness,
hungry as can be. Could you imagine 40 days? I
know some of you over the last couple of weeks were eating soup
out of a can over your grill or your cook stove and it wasn’t
so great. Maybe you’re back to fattening yourself up after the
lights are on and the fridge is working. But 40 days, who
has done that? And yet tended by God Almighty,
Jesus was not like Isaac who wanted stew or Esau who would
sell his birthright. He believed in Jehovah-Diara,
the God who could provide even in the wilderness. Even in the
wilderness, he believed unlike his spiritual children who said,
can God spread a tent in the wilderness? Can God feed a million
plus people in a dry desert? Jesus believed in Jehovah Jireh.
He did not go down to Egypt for food like his forefather Abraham. No, he waited on the Lord and
he looked Satan square in his beady, deceitful eyes. And he says, man shall not live
by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth
of God. Dear friends, you look at Jesus and say, boy, I’d like
to be able to resist temptation like that. Well, there’s a second
test that comes. And it’s not a test of hunger
like the previous one. It’s a test of whether Jesus
will wear a crown by going to the cross. Or will he take the
easy route? How will he get his crown? Will
it be by the cross or will he achieve the work of obtaining
kingdoms through deceit and losing his own integrity? You see, by
deceit, somehow, someway, Satan, who is very powerful, mind you,
all at once shows Jesus a picture of all the kingdoms of earth,
their splendor, their rule, their authority, their power. You know,
some of us this week have been watching that lottery. What’s
that balance now? Some of you know. You probably
don’t wanna say it out loud, because that means you’ve been watching. And
you’re thinking, that lottery could save me. And Jesus here
is offered every human glory, every human power. I mean, this
is winning the lottery and the whole world to boot. Satan is
deceiving him as he gives him a picture of not earthly, not
heavenly glory, but one of earthly glory, glory that will fade,
glory that will pass. And it’s reminiscent, isn’t it,
of Eve looking at the forbidden fruit. And what does the passage
tell us in Genesis chapter three? It was a delight. to her eyes. Some of you have read the Chronicles
of Narnia. Some of you know very well little Edmund. And Edmund
loved his Turkish delight. The Turkish delight got Edmund
in trouble. And dear friends, glory on earth is much like that
Turkish delight. It may taste good and it may
feel good going into the belly, but it will ruin your life eternally. And so Jesus did not have eyes
like Eve or even like Edmund. He did not see a crown without
a cross. He would not sell his soul to
the devil. And he says, you shall worship the Lord. and him only
shall you serve.” You know, we just confessed our sins a few
moments ago, corporately. We even confessed our sins for
America a little bit. And wouldn’t it be wonderful
in America if people every day would wake up and say this, you
shall worship the Lord only and him alone shall you serve. That
would take care of a whole bunch of our American problems, wouldn’t
it? You shall worship the Lord and him only shall you serve. We will not be like Israel. Jesus
will not be like Israel who wind in the wilderness, who made golden
calves and worship them and even had the nerve to say this calf,
this golden calf, we just fashioned out of our earrings and our jewelry.
This calf is the Lord who brought us out of the land of Egypt.
No, we want to be like Jesus, true worshipers of the living
and true God, not faithless, not idolatrous, but faithful
and worshiping the one living and true God. And so you say
to yourself this day, as you sit in the pew, boy, I wish I
could resist Satan like Jesus. There was a test of hunger. There
was a test of a crown without a cross. And now there’s a third
test. Will I trust and obey the living
God? Make God save you. Make God save
you. That’s what Satan says to Jesus
this go round. And notice what else he does.
He uses scripture. He says, well, Jesus has been
using scripture. And can’t you imagine Satan slithering off
as he does saying, well, the test number one didn’t work,
what’s plan B? Test number two didn’t work,
what’s plan C? Test number three, I’ll use scripture to deceive
you. Hasn’t God said thus and thus and thus? And we say, oh,
that doesn’t happen to us on our day in time. Friends, do
you know how many false preachers are out there? They got their
own TV channels. They got their own publishing
deals. They have their own line of clothing. They have their
own line of everything. And people eat it up from a spoon.
And yet the Bible is never opened. And people somehow think the
living and true God is speaking to me. We need to have the wonderful
discernment by the Holy Spirit that God gives us so that we
can trust and obey God. And we can know, we can understand
when scripture is being used deceitfully, because for sure
it is. Satan is tempting Jesus to give
up his integrity. He is, he is, tempting him to
apply some acrobatics, if you will. Stand here on the top of
the temple and jump and let God save you. And Jesus simply says,
do not put God to the test. Dear friends, Adam and Eve back
in the garden, they had a wonderful possibility. It was possible
for Adam and Eve in the garden, in a state of grace, not to sin. They could have, They could have
obeyed God perfectly and lived happy and holy lives with full
fellowship of Almighty God. It was possible. But friends,
it was also possible for them to sin. And we know that they
did. And instead of being happy and
holy, they became sinful and miserable. And instead of us
being born happy and holy, we are born sinful and miserable
until we are no longer in Adam, but in Christ Jesus. You see, Adam and Eve sinned.
And they’ve made it possible, I’m sorry, they made it not possible
for a person apart from Christ to not sin. When we are born
in Adam and Eve, it is only possible to sin and we get really good
at it. We are little sin factories when we are born. Our sin nature
is in us. And from that original sin, from
that radical corruption that is in us at our birth that we
inherit from Adam, we perform, we proceed in a life of sin until
Jesus rescues us. You see, Christ, as we’ve been
studying over the last few weeks, was not born with the same nature.
He was not the child of Joseph, but he is the eternally begotten
son of God who is conceived by the Holy Ghost and born in the
womb of the Virgin Mary. He was born under the law, yet
he obeyed it perfectly. And he went to the cross. And instead of lamb after lamb
after lamb on Yom Kippur, after lamb after lamb after lamb on
these holy days, instead of being the scapegoat sent in the wilderness
with the people, Jesus went to the cross and fully and finally
and forever paid for our sins. Because as an obedient child
of God, as the true Israel, as the only Messiah, as the great
son of David, as the eternal son of God, he paid a ransom,
he made a sacrifice, and he purchased us through the redemption. that
is now ours by faith. And because of grace, because
of grace, you can look at a passage like this and say, boy, I wish
I could resist the devil like Jesus. Dear friends, I want to
encourage you this day that as you strap on the full armor of
God, as Paul describes it in Ephesians, and as you hold your
Bible and Satan comes to you, even the world, even your own
flesh says to you that Turkish delight, that sin, that Setting
up your own kingdom is better, better, better than what God
has to offer you. You can hold on to your Bible. You can hold
fast to the word of God as you’ve read it and memorized it and
cherished it in your heart. And as the Holy Spirit works
and your friends, it is possible by God’s grace to resist the
devil and he will flee from you. Oh, yes, it’s still possible
to sin. That’s why we confessed it today. And so we live in this. We live in this battle until
we are glorified. We live in this battle until
our death. We live in this battle until we are made perfect in
heaven and we’ll never sin again in a state of glory. But we live
this life as Christians, struggling with the world. And we struggle
with the flesh. We struggle with the devil. And
what we need to do every day is get up our Bible. And we need
to say, oh Lord, help me to live by your word and not the world.
Help me to follow Christ and not the devil. and help me to
live not by my own flesh, but by your Holy Spirit. Boy, I wish I could not sin like
Jesus. I wish I could resist the devil and he would flee.
I wish that I could look at sin and not have it be a delight
to my eyes and to love and cherish God’s law and delight in it both
day and night. Dear friends, in Christ, it is
possible. In Christ, It is wonderfully
possible to live by the word, to live by the spirit. Oh yes,
we will still sin. Yes, we will still fall short
of God’s glory. But because of what Christ has
done in the wilderness, one day we’ll enter his paradise and
we will be happy and holy and live before him perfectly forever.
Let us say together, thanks be to God for Christ. Pray with
me. Our Lord and God, We aren’t amazed by grace, but
we should be. For you were tempted and you
were tried. You were put on a cross. You
offered yourself up as a living sacrifice. You paid for our sins
because they were all laid on you. Lord, we don’t live as gloriously
as we could because we like the world. We like shiny things.
We like worldly things. We like to lead and rule. We
like to be king. We don’t like anyone to be the
boss of me. But thankfully, we see Jesus.
We see him who humbled himself and became obedient, even unto
death, to the will of the Father. Lord, that’s what we want. So
give us grace to do that and not the other. Help us, we do
ask and pray with all our hearts. And we ask and pray it in the
name of Jesus’ great name. Amen. Let us respond to God’s
goodness to us in salvation as we sing from our hymnals, number
246, Though Troubles Assail Us.