Luke 4:1-13
Over
the last 2 months since Christmas we have looked at some of the milestones of
Jesus’ life......His
birth.....His
presentation in the Temple when He realized in some unique way that God was
His father.......Then
His Baptism, when He heard the voice of God saying – ‘My Son’, and at the same time
receiving the Holy Spirit.
I
would hope that we’ve all had similar milestones:
We
were certainly all born.
Hopefully, we've come to the realization
that in some special way, God is our Father.
I hope
you’ve had the experience of sensing God saying – You are my child, I’m so
pleased with you.
I hope
you’ve had the experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.
Now
we reach another milestone in Jesus' life – this period of Temptation.
Jesus
has realized it’s time to begin His ministry, His campaign to save the world.
Before
you go on a campaign, your mission, you have to choose your methods.
In
our reading today we see Jesus choosing once and for all the method by which He
prepared to win people to God.
It
shows Him rejecting the way of power and glory and accepting the way of
suffering and the cross.
We
can mistakenly think that these verses happened
in a few moments, or an hour or so, but that would be wrong.
We
must realize that Jesus deliberately went to a lonely place and for 40 days, wrestled with the problem of how He would win people.
And
this was a long battle which didn’t really cease until the cross.
Notice
the story ends with “The devil left him for a while.”
Let's look at these three temptations:
1. The first temptation was to turn stones into bread. The
wilderness is not a desert with sand, it is an arid area with millions of
little rocks and stones. Jesus was fasting so… he was hungry.
Jesus had grown up among poor people
who were often hungry.
Jesus had power to change stone into
bread, didn’t he?
The tempter is saying: If you want
people to follow you, use your wonderful powers to provide people with material
things, with food, with water, with a
job, with a home. Give them these things, they’ll follow you.
They’ll love you.
He’s really saying “bribe people”
into following You.
This is one of two temptations which
is a temptation to do good. To get
rid of world hunger is a good thing.
You and I have probably often wished
Jesus had said yes to this
temptation. That we could click our fingers and have a God who provided for our
material needs.
But Jesus answers the devil: there’s
more to life than just getting your material needs. Life isn’t just about food
and water, a job, a house.
William Barclay says, “The task of
Christianity is not to produce new conditions. It’s real task is to produce new
people, and then the new condition will follow.”
Jesus in a sense was saying: I could miraculously
produce food for the people who live on the streets and in the gutters of the world, but I'm rather going to work at producing people in the world who will go
out and give food to
2.
The 2nd temptation has Jesus seeing the whole
civilized world and hearing the devil say, “worship me, and all this will be
yours.”
This is the temptation to compromise.
The devil is saying: “I’ve got people
in my grip. More of them follow me than will ever follow You. Don’t set your
standards so high. Strike a bargain with me. Just compromise a little with evil
and people will follow You. Instead of You Jesus, trying to
change the people of the world for the next few thousand years, just change
yourself, it’ll be much easier. You want to attract people, Jesus, just do
things my way.”
It’s so easy to please people by
compromising with the standards of the world, isn’t it?
And Jesus answer is “There is only
one God and His way.”
3.
The 3rd temptation is to be a worker of wonders, a
miracle man. Throw yourself from this building and when people see you float,
they’ll love it. They’ll say: “He must
be God” .......people just love miracles.
But Jesus won’t primarily be a
miracle worker. This is why He often says to people He heals, “don’t tell
anyone”. He didn’t want people to follow Him for miracles.
So Jesus was tempted, you and I are
too.
What can we learn? I think 3 things:
1st; Notice that all the
temptations are aimed at getting Jesus to focus on Himself and His own desires,
instead of on the will of God.
But He resists taking the easy way
out (we should too). He resists placing Himself at the centre of His world (we
should too).
His focus is God’s will and God’s way
(ours should be too).
So: don’t focus on yourself.
2nd; Jesus encountered
each temptation with a word from Scripture. In faithful hands, the Bible
contains all we need to resist the devil.
Imagine how pleased the devil is that
so few Christians read the Bible.
So: Read your Bible.
3rd; we learn that Jesus
(in the power of the Spirit) resisted temptation. You and I can too.
So: Rely on the Holy Spirit to enable you to resist temptation.
