Luke's Gospel, chapter four,
and we'll read from verse one. 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 this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying,
It is written that 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 I give it. If thou therefore wilt 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 hence. For it is written, He shall give
his angels charge over thee to keep thee. And in their hands
they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot
against a stone. And Jesus 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 from him for a season. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. As soon as the baptism of the
Lord Jesus was done, we're told that the Lord prayed The Lord
prayed. So coming up out of the waters
of baptism, there in the presence of John the Baptist, in the gathering
of the people that were there, witnessing, observing John's
disciples and all those, the scribes and the Pharisees and
all those who came out of the towns and the villages to observe
and to hear John preaching, having come up out of the waters of
the Jordan, the Lord Jesus Christ prayed to his Father in heaven. And we read in the previous chapter,
it was a couple of weeks ago, Jesus also being baptised and
praying. And this prayer was no doubt
for the help and strengthening that the Lord felt in need of
at the commencement of his ministry. And accordingly, the passage,
the verse continues, the heaven was opened and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him and a voice came
from heaven which said, thou art my beloved son, in thee I
am well pleased. And at least two things occurred
here. I'm sure we could enlarge upon
them many fold, but at least two things occurred here. Christ
obtained a full measure, afresh, of the Holy Spirit. And a public
testimony was given from heaven that he was the Son of God, the
true Messiah. The Christ, long prophesied,
was now come to his task. Using the words of Malachi, we
could say, had come to his temple. And I don't know if this public
testimony alerted the devil to the identity of the Messiah,
but it seems clear that there was a necessity for the Lord
Jesus to be tested and tried and tempted in the immediate
aftermath of this revelation from heaven. Matthew is a little
bit more explicit about this necessity than is Luke. Matthew tells us the Holy Spirit
led Christ into the wilderness for the express purpose of being
tempted by Satan. And so our reading here today
describes how that trial unfolded. The Lord Jesus fasted for 40
days and 40 nights in this wilderness place. And the wilderness implies
that it was a lonely place, a place without people, and potentially
a dangerous place, potentially a place of wild animals. And
if the Lord was there day and night by himself, then there
would have been an element of danger in that situation. He went without food, though
it seems not without water, and this must have had the effect
of weakening him greatly in body. Remember this emphasis that we've
been placing in recent weeks upon the humanity of the Lord
Jesus Christ. No doubt this was another aspect
of that humanity being conveyed to us, the reality of the humanity
of Christ being taught to his church. And it must have had
the effect of weakening him in body. But all during this time,
Christ was tempted by the devil. So it seems that for the 40 days
and 40 nights, this temptation took place. but it culminated,
it came to a peak, a summit as it were, at the end of the 40
days. And it appears that the devil
came to the Lord, made an appearance and actually spoke to him in
these three direct temptations that occurred at the end of 40
days. Actually, Luke's order of temptations
is not the same as Matthew's. Mark mentions this temptation. Matthew is more explicit. Luke
also is quite detailed about this experience of the Lord.
But Luke's order of temptations is not the same as Matthew's.
And it would appear that Matthew's is the exact order because he
seems to say one after the other and give us a clear sort of schedule
and order of these temptations. But Luke tells us that Christ
was tempted to turn stones into bread to eat, a temptation that
no doubt aggravated his hunger. And then he was taken to a high
mountain and shown the glory of the kingdoms of the earth
in a moment of time, which must have been an illusion or a mirage
concocted in some way by the devil. And I thought about it. It's not easy to imagine what
it might entail. Temptation. The temptation was
that Satan would give Christ all world power if he would bow
down and worship him. It's an appalling, shameless
request that the devil made of the Lord Jesus. The first temptation
that Luke speaks about, turning stones into bread that it might
appease his hunger, undoubtedly had a spiritual implication that
here would be Christ using his divinity in order to satisfy
his human cravings. But this, this, that the Lord
Jesus should bow down to Satan and worship him was indeed an
abhorrent idea and suggestion that Satan made. The third temptation was Satan challenging the Saviour
to throw himself from the top of the temple, suggesting that
if he really was the God-Man, really was the Messiah, that
on the basis of Old Testament prophecy, Psalm 91, that the
angels would not allow him to be hurt thereby, that he wouldn't
even dash his foot against a stone. In each of these tests, the Lord
combated Satan's attack by quoting scripture and repudiating Satan's
claims of ownership and entitlement. He told the devil, man shall
not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And while we're speaking here
about bread, I think it's much broader than that. He is showing,
the Lord Jesus Christ was showing the devil that the bodies, and
indeed we could go further than that and say the lives, and the
souls, the spirits of all men and women belong to God, who
can uphold and sustain them as he pleases. And in so doing, the Lord Jesus
was denying Satan's claim upon the lives and bodies of all men,
notwithstanding the fall and notwithstanding man's sin. Any claim that Satan makes over
the lives or the bodies of men and women is a usurped claim. Satan may lead men captive, but
he has no proper ownership or governance over what God has
created. And the Lord Jesus Christ also
told the devil, get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written,
thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou
serve. Satan's pride craves the worship
of men, that he may claim the place of God. But he'll never
have it. Even in hell, he won't be worshipped. It was an abhorrent request that
the Lord Jesus Christ should worship Satan and bow down to
him, even if he was a man, but that he was God and that request
was made was totally contrary to all truth and all righteousness. And the Lord Jesus very properly
and promptly dismissed the very idea. And we are told, casting
Satan with his impudence behind his back. Now, the Lord says
to Satan, get thee behind me, Satan. And I would like to think
that in that moment, it was almost as if Satan got thrown behind
the Lord Jesus Christ, that that wasn't just a hoped-for desire
or a metaphorical statement, but that having made such a statement
that the Lord actually did cast Satan behind his back. There
you are, I'm just hoping that that's the case. The third thing
he told the devil was, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And that reminds us that the
Lord God is Satan's God by creation and as sustainer. Satan is permitted
to roam this world. He is permitted to go about this
earth only to the extent that God permits. And no doubt there
was a personal rebuke in this reply of the Lord Jesus to Satan,
as Satan discerned the divine nature of the Son of God in the
person of Jesus Christ. Now I'm sure that there are many
lessons to be drawn from this intriguing passage, but I want
just to leave a couple of thoughts with you. And the first one is
this. Our saviour, even with his divine
nature, did not face Satan's temptations without first soliciting
the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. He prayed on the banks
of the River Jordan for the Holy Spirit to come upon him before
he went into the wilderness to face these trials and temptations. So that the Lord Jesus Christ
did not face Satan's temptations without the Holy Spirit, I'm
sure that that was not for reason that he had any lack of power
as the God-man, but surely it was to show us that in our human
nature and weaknesses, there is no withstanding the wiles
and powers of the devil without divine help and divine enabling. We need the holiness of God. We need the Holy Spirit. We need
the companionship of Christ. Anyone who imagines that they
can live righteously, that they can gain and maintain holiness
in their own strength is a fool. Let us, in our own spiritual
battles, Observe what the Lord Jesus Christ did and stand solely
upon the foundation of grace. Lean upon the spirit of truth,
value the power of the scriptures to govern and equip us in our
engagements with this world and with the devil. The Lord has
gifted us the very one, the very comforter with whom he in his
own blessed life faced the tempter. And that is an example for our
own trials in this world. The second little application
we might draw from this passage is that our saviour here proved
to his people that he was able, even in his weakened human frame,
bereft of nourishment and hungry, he was able to withstand and
repel the attacks of the devil. And I've no doubt that this was
a chastening experience for Satan. And perhaps it is why we discover
that in the next few years there was such a stirring up of hellish
activity at this time of the Lord's ministry. Satan fled the
field, but he regrouped and he waited an opportunity to attack
the Saviour again, which he did in the Garden of Gethsemane and
while the Lord suffered on the cross. There again, the Lord
had the victory, proving to us emphatically and enduringly that
Satan is a defeated foe and Christ has the victory over death, hell,
and the devil. And the third little thing that
I want to leave with you, and then I'm done, is this. I have
no doubt that another reason, and maybe it's even the primary
one, why the Lord undertook this wilderness temptation experience
was to reveal his union with us, his people. Some writers
have asked, how could this have been a real trial for the Lord
when he was sinless, when he was impeccable, and as God incapable
of sin? How could this have been a real
trial, it being impossible for him to succumb to temptation
because he was the holy Lord God? Well, I don't know entirely how
to answer that, except to say that for 40 days and 40 nights,
the Lord went without food. And that, to me, is surely indicative
that this whole experience on the part of our Lord was very
real and extreme and severe. And I think that the fact that
this 40 days and 40 nights without food is emphasised and taught
to us is, as it were, the Holy Spirit's way of saying, you might
not be able to explain it, but this was real. This was real. And here our loving and merciful
Saviour is proving to His church once again, proving to you and
me for our reassurance and our comfort that He knows exactly
what we are going through when we face the trials and the troubles
and the temptations of this world. He is telling us He knows. He
is telling us in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted,
he knoweth how to succour them that are tempted. Hebrews 2,
verse 18. There isn't a weakness that he
has not felt. There isn't a pain he has not
endured. There isn't a temptation that
he has not resisted, nor a grief that he has not borne. He is
a fit and worthy companion in this life, in our times of trouble. And when we read these passages,
they show us the worthiness of our Saviour and the tender kindness
of our friend. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.