SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/7/2026 10:34
AM
My
Worship Time Focus:
“The
Preparation For The Battle”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
4:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 ¶
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led
by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for
forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days.
And when they were ended, he was hungry.” (ESB)
I had a very bad experience with my computer earlier
this morning as I hit the past button and not the copy button and lost all of
my SD for this morning.
I will now paste John MacArthur’s
sermon on these two verses, and let me warn you it will be long.
We find ourselves, this morning,
beginning a look at Luke chapter 4. The first thirteen verses of this
chapter describe the conflict between Jesus and the devil. This is the
final event, before Jesus actually begins His public ministry. This
conflict is the capstone on His preparation. In many ways, it is His
final exam in the process of preparation for His ministry.
By now,
having read Luke's gospel, we have no doubt that Jesus is the Son of God.
We have no doubt that He is the Savior of the world. We have no doubt
that He is the promised Messiah. That has been demonstrated to us in the
three chapters that have gone before. It has been demonstrated to us by
the announcement of the angel to Zacharias that he and his wife Elizabeth would
have a child who would be the forerunner to the Messiah, indicating that the
Messiah was coming soon. And then a subsequent angelic announcement to
Mary that she as a virgin would by the power of the Holy Spirit become pregnant
with a child who would be the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the promised
Messiah.
So we have
had angelic testimony. We've had the confirming testimony of Zacharias
and Elizabeth, the confirming testimony of Mary and Joseph, the confirming
testimony of Simeon and Anna. We have had a confirming testimony of
angels who informed the shepherds out in the fields of Bethlehem about the
birth of the Messiah. We have had confirming testimony from God Himself
at the baptism of Jesus. The Father out of heaven said, "This is My
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," confirming testimony by the Holy
Spirit who at His baptism descended upon Him and rested there, confirming
testimony by John the Baptist who said of Jesus, “He is the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world." And were we to turn to Matthew we
would find confirming testimony through the genealogy of Joseph, as well as in
Luke chapter 3 confirming testimony through the genealogy of Mary that indeed
He is born in the royal line of David, and thus has a right to rule as King.
So Luke
for three chapters has been massing all the proof to indicate that Jesus is, in
fact, the Messiah, Son of God, Savior of the world. But if one is to be
the Savior of the world, there is one rather formidable credential that one
must possess. Since the problem in the world is a sin problem, and since
it is sin that has damned all humanity, since it is sin that has produced
death, since it is sin that brings about the death that catapults sinners into
eternal hell, since sin is under the aegis of the prince of this world, the
ruler of this world, namely the devil, if one is to come and break the power of
sin and conquer evil and defeat Satan, He must be able to combat the devil and
come out the victor. And that’s precisely what Luke tells us He is able
to do in this chapter.
Messiah's
credentials would be incomplete without this battle. If Jesus cannot
defeat Satan head on, one on one, then He is not adequate to redeem
sinners. If He Himself is not impervious to sin, if He is not impeccable,
if He is not invulnerable to sin, if He does not come out pure and spotless in
the midst of the most violent conflict with the devil, then He cannot be the
Savior. If He is to save sinners from their sin, if He is to save them
from the devil, if He is to save them from death and hell, then He must conquer
sin and Satan himself. That is what this text intends to prove.
This, as I
said, is the capstone on messianic credentials. This is what ultimately
has to be known. If we are to trust our time in eternity to Christ, if we
are to trust Him as our Savior and the forgiver of our sins, if we are to trust
Him to overpower sin and overpower death and overpower the devil and overpower
hell and set us free and bring us to heaven, then we need to know that He has
the ability to conquer Satan in the most intense confrontation.
There once
was a man who was perfect. There once was a man who was without
sin. There once was a man who was undefiled. There once was a man
who lived in a perfect environment, a perfect place, a perfect world.
There once was a man who had everything that could possibly be given him by God
and that man, the first time he was ever assaulted with temptation, fell, both
he and his wife, and catapulted all of humanity into condemnation. Is
Jesus like Adam? Is this another Adam, who though perfect at the start,
can't sustain that in the battle with the enemy? We need to know that.
And Luke
knows we need to know that and the Holy Spirit knows we need to know
that. We cannot have a victim for our Savior. We can only have a
victor. We cannot have someone who is as susceptible to sin as we are, as
susceptible to death and hell and the devil as we are. We have to have
someone who can conquer sin, conquer death, conquer Satan, conquer hell.
Now the
Jews knew about the devil. In the Old Testament he was called Satan,
which means adversary, or enemy. He first appears by name, of course, in
Job, then again in Zechariah, then again in 1 Chronicles, but he appears, first
of all, as a serpent in the third chapter of Genesis. The Jews knew about
the enemy, the adversary. They knew about the personification of
evil. They knew Satan as the source of evil. They knew that he had
brought down the whole human race in Eden. And the question was: If Jesus
is the Messiah, can He overturn this? Can He bring back the paradise
lost? Can He conquer the enemy of God and the enemy of our souls?
So Luke
records this for us. Look at chapter 4 verse 1. "And Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led about by the
Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And
He ate nothing during those days and when they had ended He became
hungry. And the devil said to Him, 'If you are the Son of God, tell this
stone to become bread.' And Jesus answered him, 'It is written man shall
not live on bread alone.' And he led Him up and showed Him all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and the devil said to Him, 'I'll give
You all this domain and its glory for it's been handed over to me and I can
give it to whomever I wish, therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be
yours.' And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is written you shall
worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.' And he led Him to
Jerusalem and had Him stand 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 give His angels charge 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 and said to him, 'It is said you shall not put the Lord your God to
the test.' And when the devil had finished every temptation, he departed
from Him until an opportune time."
Obviously
Jesus triumphs over Satan. That is absolutely critical. That is the
last... That is the last capstone on the wall of messianic credentials.
This is the final exam that Jesus passes to qualify as the Savior of sinners.
As I said
earlier, He is not like Adam and yet He is like Adam. He is a son of
Adam, but He is far beyond Adam. Though He, like Adam, is truly human,
He, unlike Adam, cannot sin. Let me kind of help you a little bit to see
deeper into that contrast because I think it really elucidates this account.
It is
important to know that Jesus was a man. He was an actual son of
Adam. He goes back to Adam, all the way back, and that is clear from
verse 38 of chapter 3. All the way back, son of Adam, Son of God, that is
to say Jesus is truly human, He is truly and fully human. He is not like
a man. He doesn't look like a man or act like a man, He is a man.
He is 100 percent fully human. Hebrews 2:17 puts it this way, "He
had to be made like His brethren in all things." There is no area in
Jesus' existence that is not fully human. He is fully human. He is
truly a son of Adam. He was born as a human. He was a babe in the
womb of His mother. He lived as an infant, as a toddler, as a child, as a
young person, as a teen-ager, as a young adult, as a mature adult, and
according to chapter 2 verse 40 and verse 52, He grew in wisdom and stature and
favor with God and man.
Remember,
one of the most important messages I gave you a few weeks ago was on the
humanity of Jesus. He is God, but He voluntarily set aside the
independent exercise of His deity. He didn't cease to be God, He is fully
God and fully man, but He voluntarily set aside the independent exercise of His
deity and submitted Himself to the Father's will and the Spirit's power.
He did what the Father wanted Him to do and He did it by the power of the Holy
Spirit. So He set aside the use of His divine powers and submitted
Himself to true humanness and allowed the Spirit of God to work His work
through Him.
By the age
of twelve, He knew who He was and why He had come. That's why He lingered
in Jerusalem, in the temple. And when His parents finally found Him, He said,
"I had to be in My Father's place doing My Father's work." He
knew He was the Son of God. He knew why He had come. He grew like
any person grows, like any human being grows. And as He grew as a real
man, the Spirit of God gave to Him more and more of the truth of His
personhood. And as He grew He was exposed to temptation. When the
writer of Hebrews says He was at all points tempted like as we are, it means in
all points in the chronology of His life. He was tempted as an infant,
the way infants are tempted. He was tempted as a child the way children
are tempted. He was tempted as a young adult the way young adults were
tempted and so forth and so forth. All through His life He was tempted,
with one great distinction, and you must understand this, all the temptations,
all the solicitations to evil that ever came to Jesus stayed on the outside.
This is why it's impossible for us to grasp that because we don't understand
temptation in that sense. Why? Because for us temptation takes
place predominantly on the inside; but for Jesus, there was nothing in Him that
could internalize that temptation and work it toward evil.
James 1 says,
"Sin happens when lust conceives and brings forth sin." But
there was no lust in Jesus, no lust for those things which He could see, the
lust of the eyes; the things He could feel, the lust of the flesh. There was nothing
in Him in His perfect, holy person that could internalize the temptation. So it
came to Him on the outside. It hammered Him relentlessly on the outside
and He was without capacity to conceive that thing by some evil motive or
intent in His heart into an actual sin.
So, He was
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without what? Without
sin. Because He had no capacity to internalize it. But nonetheless
the onslaught came and He heard it and He heard all the cleverness of it and He
saw it in the world around Him and in people and the demons that orchestrated
it and here Satan himself who orchestrates it. He could see the
temptation. He could understand the temptation, but He could not
internalize it, mixing it with some evil intent because it didn't exist in Him.
He was true humanity, He was holy, He was unfallen and He was perfect, but
different than Adam in that Adam apparently did have the capacity to
internalize temptation and turn it into sin. Jesus did not. That's why I
love the statement Jesus made in John 14:30, He said that, "The ruler of
the world,” Satan, “is after Me but he has nothing in Me.” He has nothing in
Me, he has nothing on Me, he can lay no claim on Me, he can make no justifiable
charge of sin." Now devil...the devil, as he is called here in verse
2, is the Greek word diabolos and it means
"accuser," and it means "slanderer." And that's what
Satan does. That's what he is. He's the accuser of the
brethren. He's the slanderer. And, of course, he would love to
bring an accusation against God's elect, and the Lord, of course, defends us
from that, according to Romans 8, because we belong to Him and Jesus has
already paid the penalty for our sins. It is also true that he would want
to bring an accusation against Jesus Himself, but he had none that he could
bring legitimately. He has no claim on Me. He has nothing in Me.
There was no justifiable charge of sin that ever could be leveled at the Son of
God.
And I will
just tell you something as a footnote you need to remember. Some people
question the deity of Jesus. Lots of people question the deity of Jesus.
Mormons deny the deity of Jesus. Jehovah's Witnesses deny the deity of
Jesus. Liberals deny the deity of Jesus. But I'll tell you one
group who don't: Demons. Demons do not deny the deity of Jesus and the
devil never denies the deity of Jesus. He always assumes it. Repeatedly
he says to Him, "If” or since “You are the Son of God." verse
3. It never was a question, never. They know who they are dealing
with and Satan knew exactly who he was dealing with and he knew exactly what he
wanted to accomplish and that was somehow to put so much subtle, powerful,
clever pressure on Jesus as to overturn His holiness and force Him into sin so
that he could literally destroy Jesus' ability to save sinners and to destroy
him, the devil.
Now Jesus
obviously was tempted in all points like as we are. Yet when you come to
this passage there are specific temptations the likes of which we could never
have because they relate particularly and only to Jesus' unique person and
work. And we'll see that as it unfolds. But nonetheless, nonetheless, we
will learn from Jesus the path of triumph in the midst of temptation.
So, this
is a monumental moment. This is the second Adam being confronted with a
massive assault like the first Adam. The first Adam was also sinless,
like the second Adam. But the first Adam fell. The second Adam did not,
cannot, and will not. Adam then puts the whole race into sin and
damnation, and Jesus lifts sinners to heaven. It all comes down to the
issue of defeating sin. He was a true Son of Adam then, truly human, and
as a man His Father could say of Him, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased. Thirty years He's lived, He's never thought, said, or done
anything that didn't please Me. That is His perfection." He is
then going to be attacked, as it were, by Satan and where the first Adam fell,
He triumphs.
So here is
Jesus Christ, the second Adam, the head of a new humanity who will rise to
glory rather than fall to hell like the old humanity led by the first
Adam. It tells us that He has infinitely greater power in Himself than
Adam ever had. Adam was just a man, this is the God-Man and His humanity
is protected from sin by His deity.
Think
about the circumstances that make the distinction between Jesus and Adam so
obvious. Adam was in a garden, the best imaginable place. He was in
Eden, he was in paradise. Jesus was in an anti-Eden, the most desolate,
forsaken, and dangerous place in the Judean desert, barren and empty.
Adam lived
in a sinless world, a sinless environment. Jesus lived in a sinful
world. Adam never had known any temptation. Adam fell at the first
temptation, which means there was no prior assault to try to break down his
resistance. Jesus has had thirty years of temptation and then forty days
of temptation before the final three come, all that attempting to break down
His resistance.
Adam had
perfect human strength, perfect human strength. Adam was delightfully and
wonderfully fed by all the lush provisions of the garden. Jesus was
weakened by forty days with no food.
Adam had
all conceivable things to enjoy, never knowing hunger. Jesus was hungry,
well He was starving. Adam needed nothing, he needed nothing. He
had everything. He ruled everything. Jesus had nothing, no food, no
authority, nothing, no kingdom, no sphere of rule. He's all alone.
And Adam
certainly had no need to test God to see if God really cared, to see if God
really loved him, since he had ample evidence that God loved him and God cared
while he was wandering around in the lavishness of Eden. Jesus deprived
of all of that and everything else, with nothing but a desolate desert and
Satan trying to push Him to test God to see if God really does love Him.
So, Jesus
with a right to eat as the creator has no food. Jesus with the right to
rule as King has no kingdom. Jesus with the right to divine care and
divine protection and divine blessing is exposed to the severest dangers.
And the point should be clear. Jesus didn't fall, Adam did. And that
tells you what a vast difference there is between Jesus and Adam. In the
best of circumstances, Adam fell. In the worst imaginable circumstances,
Jesus did not. This is our Savior. This is our Messiah. And
this is the proof of it. Adam, innocent, perfect, rich, lacking nothing,
fell under the first assault. Jesus did not. Poor, alone, weary, hungry
and He is triumphant.
I can't
tell you other than to say this is absolutely critical to the issue of
salvation. That's why it's here. It's not just an interesting
incident. It's the heart and soul of everything. Jesus can't save us from
sin and death and hell if He Himself cannot conquer it. So where the
first man failed, in Adam we all died, the second man succeeds, in Christ we
all live.
Now this
brings up the question and theologians have always liked to talk about this
question, although I've always thought it was kind of silly to do that. The
question is: Could He have sinned? This is called the debate about the
impeccability of Jesus, and you can read all kinds of material on this.
Could Jesus have sinned? And there have been theologians through the
years who have said yes He could have sinned.
They're
wrong, clearly. I don't even know why anybody would discuss it. Of course He
couldn't sin. Can God sin? God can't sin. "He's of purer eyes than
to behold evil,” “can't look upon iniquity." He has no capacity to
sin. Jesus had no capacity within Him to turn anything into a sin. He
couldn't conceive anything in such a way, mixing it with lust and evil intent
as to produce a sin. It was impossible because there was nothing in His
nature to do that, nothing.
In
Luke 1 verse 35, when the child was to be born, the child is called
"that holy offspring,” that holy offspring. This is not a child like
any other child. And by the age, as I said, of thirty the Father can say,
"This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Thirty
years He had never sinned. If He could have, He would have. He
didn't because He couldn't. Second Corinthians 5:21, “God made Him who knew no sin to
be sin for us," right? He knew no sin. He knew no sin.
He had no capacity to internalize temptation and transport it into sin.
He committed no sin, 1 Peter 2:22. Hebrews 7:26, "He is holy. He is
undefiled. He is separate from sinners." He did not sin, He could
not sin. That is obvious.
Well then,
some theologians would say, "Well if He couldn't sin then temptation
wasn't real." That's not true. That’s... That's not
true. You don't always sin when you're tempted which means you could be
tempted and not sin. You can be hit with some strong temptation and you
can be victorious and walk away and not sin and thank God and praise God and be
triumphant. As Christians we do that. That doesn't mean it wasn't a
temptation. The fact that Jesus couldn't sin doesn't mean He couldn't be
tempted. Look, Satan tempted Him, he tempted Him personally. The
devil came and tempted Him personally. Demons came and tempted Him
personally. Demons working in the wicked leaders of Israel and others
came after Jesus. He was exposed to sin all around Him as the system of Satan
worked its way through human depravity. It came at Him on the outside. He
saw it all. He understood it in His mind but He had no internal capacity
to turn that into a sin. But it doesn't mean that He didn't feel or
experience the reality of that temptation.
I can
think of times when I've been in a debate with somebody who was wrong, really
wrong about something in the Scripture. And this coming at me and
somebody is arguing this and arguing this and arguing this, and I see that in
my mind as a temptation to...to leave orthodoxy, to abandon what is true and
cave into this. The fact that I don't cave into that because I'm strong
in the Word and I know sound doctrine doesn't make it less a temptation, does
it? It's still a temptation.
Every
temptation that came to Jesus was a temptation from the outside. No
solicitation of evil ever came up in the inside because there was nothing there
to generate that. Now in that sense He's not like us. He is fully
human but you can be fully human and perfect, as Adam was. In the case of
Jesus, He's fully human and perfect and His perfection as a man is protected by
His deity, which is holy, infinitely holy. It doesn't mean the
temptations weren't real, what it really means is the temptations were stronger
and stronger because He never caved in. I mean, if you're standing there
and somebody is trying to push you over and you brace yourself and you keep
standing and they keep pushing and keep pushing, at some point you fall over,
you're never going to know where their full strength was. But if you
never get in... If you never give in, if you stand there, you will get the full
fury of everything they have to offer until they finally run out of energy and
back away. That's exactly what happens in the case of Jesus. He is
tempted and the temptation goes to its maximum capacity every time because He
never budges. So it isn't that He didn't feel the temptation, it is that
He felt it in its fullest.
Westcott
says, "Sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the
experience of sin, but on the experience of the strength of the temptation to
sin which only the sinless can know in its full intensity," end
quote. That's exactly right. Only the sinless One knows how intense
the temptation can be, every temptation, because he never gives in and finally
the temptation having exhausted itself departs.
Jesus
never gave in so in the end He experienced the full force of every temptation
to its maximum level, but never internalized sin. So here we find in our
text the Son of God being tested and His perfect, holy, righteousness which the
angel said was true, "That holy offspring," which the Father said was
true, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," is here
proven to be true in a battle with sin and the devil. And the conclusion
of this is that Jesus is qualified to be our Satan-conqueror. Through the
temptations He demonstrates His qualification.
Now we're
going to look at the specifics of the temptation next time, but let's look at
the first point, the preparation. We'll see the preparation for the
battle. We'll see the pattern of the battle, how the temptations are designed,
and the answers. Then we'll see the postmortem on the battle, what happened at
the end.
Let's look
at the preparation for the battle. This is not just a distant sort of
historical look or Christological look. There is so much here that is
practical and you're going to see by the time we get to the end of this a
pattern for triumph in your own life as you battle with temptation. But
let's look at the preparation. I find this just so dramatic.
Verses 1
and 2, the stage is set. "And Jesus,” the perfect God-Man affirmed
by the Father to be sinless, “full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan
and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted
by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days. When they had
ended, He became hungry."
Now
there's a lot of theology in that statement, "full of the Holy
Spirit," but I want to confine a large subject to its specific purpose
here. "Full" is simply a word that means to be saturated with,
or it means to be permeated thoroughly with. This is something that is
true of Jesus at all times. When the Holy Spirit came upon Him at His
baptism, descended as a dove and settled upon Him, that isn't the first time
the Holy Spirit arrived in the life of Jesus. It is simply a symbol of
the fact that the Spirit of God was resting on Him through His whole
life. Jesus in Matthew 12 said, "If you say,” as you
have...to the Jewish leaders...“that what I do I do by the power of Satan, you
blaspheme the Holy Spirit." Why? Because if you attribute the
work of Jesus to the devil, you blaspheme the Spirit because it's really being
done by the Spirit through Him. So it was the Spirit through Him all the
way along. From the time that He was born it was the Spirit of God that
permeated His being. It was the Spirit of God that dwelt within Him in personal
presence and fullness there.
The Spirit
of God always there giving Him victory over every situation as He matured and
grew up. And here He is in the fullness of manhood now, having had His
baptism and His public proclamation, He has been announced, He has been
presented by the prophet John, He is on the launch pad for going into His
ministry which was planned by the Father before creation. All this time
has gone by, all these thirty years of His life on top of that, finally He
reaches this moment and He is described as being saturated with the Spirit of
God. And this is something that Jesus experienced through His entire
life.
Now we
talk about being filled with the Spirit, we read about it, Ephesians 5, be
being filled with the Spirit. That's something we desire, isn't it?
We desire to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. We desire to be permeated, to be
saturated with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We desire to do
only the Spirit's will, only through the Spirit's power, only that which the
Spirit of God desires for us. We desire that. We pursue that.
We long for that. We hunger for that. And on occasion there are
people in the Bible times who experienced it. There was John the Baptist,
who was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb, and consequently
began to move in the womb of Elizabeth which was a confirmation of the coming
of the Messiah. So God filled John the Baptist before he was born with
the Holy Spirit in such a way as to manifest indication of the Messiah's
coming. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was filled with the
Holy Spirit — chapter 1, I think it's verse 67 — and began to speak the very
words of God. So totally saturated by the Spirit of God that what he said
was not at all human, it wasn't at all his. It was right exactly what God
wanted him to say.
On the day
of Pentecost, Luke records that the 120 were in the upper room and they were
all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other languages the
wonderful works of God in a miraculous way. And then the apostles were
filled with the Spirit of God in chapter 4. And then in chapter 6 there
were some deacons in the church who were filled with the Spirit of God in their
ministry. And you find the filling of the Holy Spirit referred to by Luke
a number of times in the book of Acts, chapter 7, chapter 9, chapter 11,
chapter 13. That's something that happened occasionally in the life of an
apostle when the Spirit of God literally saturated, permeated, took over
control of an individual for a time.
But for
fallen people like us, it's not something that is a constant way of life from
the cradle to the grave, as it was for Jesus. For us, we desire to be
filled with the Spirit, we desire that, we long for that. That's why Paul says,
"Be being kept filled with the Spirit, letting the Word of Christ dwell in
you richly," it's the same thing, it's something we pursue, we want to be
controlled and saturated by the presence and power of the Spirit. But for
Jesus that was a constant reality. That's how He lived His entire
life. He as a man setting aside the independent use of His own
attributes, submitting Himself to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit who
through Him does the Father's will.
So He's
ready. He's in the fullness of the Spirit. That means to say He
hasn't done anything here that's jeopardized Himself. He's not going to
be tempted of the devil because somehow He's wandered out of the way of the
Father or He's wandered off the path of the Holy Spirit, or He's done something
independent of the Spirit and so He's gotten Himself into a difficult
situation. No, He's under the full control of the Holy Spirit when He
returns from the Jordan. Now the Jordan, that's where He's been because
that's where He was baptized, in chapter 3. That's where John the Baptist was
preaching. That's where John presented Him as the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world, as John 1:29 says. So that's all
done. He's been baptized. He's been presented. Now it's time
to go and do His ministry.
So He
leaves the Jordan valley and He starts west, and west from the Jordan valley is
the steep slope or the plateau on which Jerusalem sits, about a mile up.
The Dead Sea, the end of the Jordan river is 1,500 miles below sea level, so
it's a tremendous climb up that area. And the Spirit of God is leading
Him. He is not somehow falling into the devil's clutches. He's not making
bad choices and ending up in a vulnerable situation. He is in total
control of the Holy Spirit and it says in verse 1 He was led about by the
Spirit in the wilderness. So the Spirit takes Him right into the
wilderness, right from the Jordan where there was plenty of water and there
were plenty of people listening to John preach into absolute isolation.
But it's the Spirit of God who is doing everything to bring about the purposes
of God. He is thoroughly saturated with the Spirit. Remember John 3:34? God says, "He gives
not the Spirit by measure." When God gave Jesus the Spirit, He
didn't give it to Him in doses, He didn't give Him little bits of the Holy
Spirit, He gave Him the fullness of the Spirit, John 3:34 and 35, not measured out in
increments. So He is fully led by the Spirit of God, fully empowered by
the presence of the Spirit of God and He moves toward the wilderness.
Mark 1:12, Mark also records His temptation
in chapter 1, and Matthew does in chapter 4. Mark 1:12, "The Holy Spirit drove Him
into the wilderness." And the idea here is that it was the Spirit of
God moving Him that way. And this is how it would always be in Jesus’
life. The Spirit of God would move the God-Man where He wanted to be to do the
Father's will. So the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness.
Let me
talk about the wilderness a little bit. I've been there. I've stood
in that place. And some of you have done it as well. The last time
I went to Israel we took a group of people and we gave them an experience, the
likes of which they're not likely to forget, and that is we took them into this
wilderness on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, not the main road, not the
road everybody travels, but the old road that runs along the area called
"the devastation." This is a frightening and terrifying kind of
experience. That is where the Holy Spirit leads Jesus.
You know,
just as a footnote before I go any further about talking on the wilderness,
isn't it interesting how sometimes our highest moments are followed by our
deepest trials? Jesus has been waiting since all eternity for this and
waiting thirty years in the obscurity of Nazareth for the baptism and the
launch of His ministry.
The high
point, the Father commends Him, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased." Visibly the Spirit of God affirms Him. John the
Baptist, the great forerunner, the greatest man who had ever lived up until his
time announces Him as the Lamb of God. He is full of the Holy
Spirit. He is in full consciousness of His divine nature. He is in
full consciousness of His divine mission. His sacred humanity is filled
with the Spirit's power. His soul is charged with joy and contemplation
of His privilege and purpose. Finally after all this time and eternity
and all these thirty years He is ready to begin His ministry and He's reached
the peak of this great statement of the Father, "This is My beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased." And it's immediately after that that the Spirit
of God drives Him from the highest point in His life to the lowest point, into
mortal combat with the devil. And it's not as if the devil came looking
for Jesus. It's that Jesus came looking under the power of the Holy Spirit for
the devil.
And he
found him in the wilderness, the area between the Dead Sea, the Jordan river,
the Dead Sea and Jerusalem. It is an area in the Old Testament called
Jeshimon, and it's called... It could be translated "the
devastation." It's a really terrifying place. To take a ride
in a vehicle up that road is frankly very frightening. Many people have
been frightened by that. It is a precipitous area, loose rock. It is
rock, rock, rock and more rock, jagged, ragged, craggy peaks with severe
ravines that go down hundreds of feet. It is dry. It is
barren. It is inhabited by wild animals, snakes, scorpions and all of
that. It is barren. It is the worst part of the Judean
desert. It is certainly a place where Jesus would be more alone than any
other place in Palestine. And the fact of the matter is, the only reason
we even know what happened there is because Jesus allowed it to be recorded
because He was the only one there. It's about a thirty-five by fifteen
mile area, be very hard to move around in that area. I have felt the
rocks sliding under my feet. I remember standing on a little knoll and
feeling the rocks sliding under my feet as I was trying to get closer to the
edge and seeing the sheer drop down to a bottom I couldn't even see. It's
that kind of an area; very difficult area to traverse, almost unthinkable
experience to spend forty days there, six weeks.
Deuteronomy 8:15 says, "The terrible and
great wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where
there was no water." It is not a garden, it is not a place where a
garden grows, this place. It's the worst of places. It's not even a
place you could hike. You just stay by the safety of the road you're on.
He was there forty days, six weeks, wandering in the dangerous, dry, desolate
area. And all the while, it says in verse 2, "being tempted by the
devil." All the time the devil's after Him in that
environment. He's all alone. And this is very important. There's no
one there to aid Him. There's no one there to deflect some of the temptation,
there's no one there to offer counsel. It is critically important that
Jesus be able all alone, one-to-one, to defeat the devil. If He needs
help, we're in some trouble.
Now Luke
has already made us aware that there's evil in the world. He hasn't
really specifically said that in the three chapters we've studied, but he's
indicated as much because he said in verse 16 of chapter 1 that John the
Baptist would turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and he
would turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the disobedient
to the attitude of the righteous. So we already know there's sin in the
world. There's disobedience in the world. And there needs to be
repentance in the world. We also know there's darkness. Chapter 1
verse 79, people sit in darkness. We also know there's the shadow of
death. Chapter 2 verse 34 we know that the child is appointed for the
fall and rise of many and a sign to be opposed and a sword will pierce even
your own soul. So we know there's suffering and pain and a heart-piercing
experience in the world. Chapter 3, verse 19, there are terribly wicked
people like Herod, Herodias, his brother's wife, who locked up John in prison
and then cut his head off. So Luke isn't hiding evil from us. But
he gives evil a face here. And for the first time in his gospel we come
to meet the devil.
He's a
player in the whole story, always has been since Genesis 3, this diabolos,
this slanderer, this accuser, this Satan. He's been before God in Job
accusing. He's been before God in Zechariah 3, 1 Chronicles 21,
accusing, accusing, slandering, slandering. He is the enemy of God.
He is the hater of God. But we don't meet him until here.
Who is
this devil? Well I won't go over a lot of detail because we've done that
in our series in Genesis. But suffice it to say he was originally created
by God as a holy angel, right? His name was Lucifer. Jesus said He
saw Lucifer fall from heaven like lightning. He was the anointed
cherub. If you read Ezekiel 28:11 to 15, Isaiah 14:12 to 14, you read about
him. He was the anointed cherub which probably means he was the praise
and worship leader of heaven. He was heaven's chief musician. He
was the one who led all the angelic praise. He was... He was the anointed
cherub. He was the main, holy angel in charge of praise.
For some
incomprehensible reason he decided that wasn't enough, that he wanted to be
equal with God. And so the prophets tell us, Isaiah 14,
Ezekiel 28, that he said, "I will, I will, I will, I will, I
will." Five times he sought to usurp God's throne, dethrone God and take
over heaven. He was in Eden in all his beauty. He had
everything. But pride was lifted up in his heart and he thought to
dethrone God and God threw him out of heaven. Revelation 12 says
when He threw him out, He threw a third of the angels with him because they
joined in the rebellion. There was mutiny in heaven. One third of
the angels were thrown out. They became the demons so now that is the
devil and his demons. They are outnumbered by the two thirds of holy
angels who still remain and always will.
This...
This fallen angel, this adversary, this archenemy of God who once was heaven's
praise leader, then decided that he wanted to take the whole human race into
his rebellion, and he succeeded with Adam and Eve and plunged all humanity into
sin. Now he comes after Jesus, the incarnate God-Man Himself. And
he must destroy Jesus because Jesus is the second Adam, and He has come to
bring life back to the dead. He has come to rescue people from
hell. He has come to conquer sin and to destroy the devil. So the
devil knows that he's fighting for his life here, as well as destroying Jesus
as the Savior, he's fighting for his own life because if he loses, then he
loses eternally and he's going to end up in the Lake of Fire.
So into
the wilderness comes Jesus, all alone, led by the Spirit of God who has filled
Him, permeated Him, to find the devil for the confrontation. This
loneliest of all places, this anti-Eden, this most cursed piece of land where
no garden grows and for forty days the devil throws everything he's got at
Him. Interestingly enough, those forty days pass in silence. Satan
came to Eve in Eden and seduced her to distrust God and to think God wasn't
really good and to think God really didn't care. She fell. And
that's why Satan is called in Revelation 9:11 “the destroyer.” He’s also
the liar, John 8:44. He's a liar from the
beginning and the father of lies and the murderer or the killer. As 1 John 5:9 says, "The whole world
lies in his lap." And 2 Corinthians 4:4 says he's blinded the minds
of the entire human race.
So here
comes the blinder, the liar, the murderer, the destroyer who wanted Jesus dead
from the time He was born and he's coming after Jesus and he's going to try to
get Him to sin. And if he can't get Him to sin, he's going to try to kill
Him. And for forty days the onslaught goes on without success. For
forty days the enemy tries to break the resistance of Jesus to evil. For
forty days Jesus concentrates His mind on the conquest of evil, fully dependent
on the Holy Spirit in proving that He is impeccable, invincible, impervious to
iniquity. For 40 days Satan gains not one inch of ground and the devil
gives up after forty days, but only for a moment.
"And
when they had ended, He became hungry." He had eaten nothing for
forty days. Let's just assume that that means what it says, He has eaten
nothing. I read a commentary, he said, "Well, He probably ate some
things." Why do people do that? Even I'm smart enough to know
what "He ate nothing" means. He ate nothing. He's in a
serious condition. The devil has been pushing against this immovable
object the whole time, and He's felt the full fury of all of Satan's energies,
the maximum power of every temptation until the devil was so exhausted he had
to come back and regroup and come with another one. And finally the devil
backs away and for the first time in forty days it tells us, "When they
had ended, He became hungry." He wasn't hungry during the forty
days, the thing was too intense, it was too strong.
He feels
the hunger for the first time and as Jesus begins to feel that hunger, the
devil senses a new opportunity. He smells blood, he senses vulnerability,
and he moves in for what he hopes will be the kill. And so, starting in
verse 3 come the three final temptations, the big guns. Satan pulls out
the big guns to fire at what he perceives to be a now vulnerable Jesus.
He's found an angle in Jesus' hunger, in Jesus being starved and weak, and he's
going to exploit that to the max and see if he can't crush the Son of God under
the power of his assault. That's when the battle really begins. The
pattern of the battle we'll look at next time. You don't want to miss it.
It is drama beyond drama. We'll see that next time. Let's pray.
Father, we
are so privileged to have been let in to the struggle of our Savior that we
might learn how He dealt with the enemy, how He overcame temptation and more
than that, that we might be affirmed and assured of His invincibility, that He
is, in fact, able to save us to the uttermost, that He is able to be the Lamb
without spot and without blemish who can die as our substitute, that He has the
power to conquer sin and death and Satan and hell. We see such a
triumphant Christ here and we know that this is a time of grave humiliation for
Him as He was wandering alone in such a desolate place and as the enemy was
hitting Him with everything he could come up with. It was so humiliating
for Him to endure that and yet in His greatest humiliation was His greatest
victory. He triumphs over Satan in the wilderness and He even triumphs
over Satan and death at the cross. No matter how humiliated, it only gave
Him greater opportunity to manifest the glory of His person. We thank You
for the triumph of Jesus Christ over the enemy, in which triumph we are raised
from death to life, from hell to heaven, from sin to righteousness. We
thank You that we are in Christ victors, more than conquerors, in that we
rejoice and give Him praise. Amen.
5/7/2026
10:45 AM
