“The Temptation of Jesus”

Luke 4:1-13

2/21/10

       Jesus seems to be doing things backwards here.  After their deliverance from Egypt, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, where they were fed with the manna from heaven, before they crossed the Jordan River under the leadership of Joshua and entered into the promised land.  But instead of starting in the wilderness, Jesus starts in the promised land, then goes backwards, through the Jordan River and into the wilderness, where instead of being fed, He goes hungry.  Why does He do this?  Why not go forwards instead?  Why not start where the people are?  Because where people are (and that includes you and me) is in bondage to the devil on account of their sins.  And in order to free us from this bondage, Jesus must go back to where it all started, to that defining event which brought about our bondage in the first place.  And that is when we stopped listening to God’s words and listened to the devil’s instead.  Adam and Eve did it in the beginning; the Israelites continued to do it in the wilderness; we do it today.  And so, Jesus does a do-over.  He goes back to where it all went wrong, in order to make it all right.  He is the new Adam, the new Israel, succeeding where these failed, coming forth victorious where these were defeated, by doing what they (and we) should have done in the first place - resisting the devil’s temptations with the Word of God.

In order to do this, Jesus had to be tempted in the same way as Adam and Israel were tempted, tempted with the same temptations that we face; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been much of a do-over.  Not only that, but such a do-over had to be done by a man, a representative of the human race.  But where could such a representative be found?  The seed of Adam is contaminated, entirely infected with sin.  A person who were just a man couldn’t do this do-over; he couldn’t even do it for himself, let alone us.  We sinners can’t go back and right our wrongs.  The toothpaste is already out of the tube.  There’s no putting it back in again.  The damage has been done, and we are the ones who are damaged.  We can’t fix ourselves.  The only kind of man that could help us is one who were also God, God in the flesh.  Jesus is that Man.  He is the only one who could do the do-over for us.  If He were God alone, His victory over the devil would be sure, but it would only be God’s victory, not man’s.  But since Jesus is both God and Man, His victory is man’s victory as well as God’s.  Jesus doesn’t do the do-over for Himself.  He doesn’t overcome the temptations of the devil simply to show off His deity or even to show us that we too could do what He does, if we just followed His example.  Instead, He does His do-over for you and for me, so that through faith in Him, we might have a new beginning.

By overcoming the devil’s temptations for us and by perfectly keeping the Word of God in our place, Jesus has taken away the power of the devil to wield death over us and accuse us before God.  The Lord’s victory over him here is the beginning of the end for the devil, his kingdom, and his power.  The cross of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead spell the final defeat of the devil; Christ’s nails are the nails in the devil’s coffin, as it were.  And the devil knew that this was why Jesus had come.  So, in order to try to keep this from happening, the devil saw an opportunity here to do a do-over himself.  Jesus was fresh meat, another Adam to be sure, one just like the first one (or so he thought), untainted yet by sin.  He’d try the same temptations on this Adam as he did on the first one.

First, he’d try to get Jesus to doubt God’s Word, just like he had gotten Adam and Eve to do in the beginning.  The last words that the Father had spoken to Jesus were those He spoke from heaven at the Lord’s Baptism:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  The devil tried to get Jesus to doubt these words with his words, “If you are the Son of God...”  It’s just like the words he had spoken to Adam and Eve in the garden when he asked, “Did God really say...?”  At that time, Adam and Eve forgot to listen to what God had said to them, and instead listened to the devil.  This time, however, the second Adam refused to fall for this temptation.  He knew who He was and what His Father had said to Him, and He clung to those words.  But along with trying to get Jesus to doubt what the Father had said, the devil was also trying to get Jesus to doubt whether the Father cared enough to provide for Him.  It looked like the Father had forgotten about Him out here in the wilderness; Jesus better take things into His own hands.  The Israelites had fallen to this temptation, when they grumbled against God for their lack of food and water, claiming that He had only brought them out into the wilderness to kill them.  So, they started making plans to kill Moses and return to Egypt.  This time, however, the new Israel, Jesus, trusted that His Father would provide for Him.  In fact, He had already provided for Him by giving Him an even better kind of bread than the bread He had sent from heaven.  It was the bread of His Word.  The bread of this world only gives temporal life.  The bread of God’s Word gives eternal life.  What’s more, those who eat of this bread have the promise that they will suffer no lack of the other kind.  As David says, “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.”  And “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.”  And so, by teaching us to pray to the Father that He give us each day our daily bread, Jesus wants us to trust that our heavenly Father will give us not only what we need for our bodies and lives, but also and most importantly the bread of His Word.

Adam, Israel, you, and I have failed at this.  But where Israel failed during their 40 in the wilderness, Jesus was victorious during His 40 in the wilderness.  He didn’t fall to the devil’s temptation to doubt God’s Word.  Instead He trusted in it and used that very Word to counter the devil’s words.  He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone.”  But when the devil saw that he had lost this round, he didn’t quit.  He went on to another temptation.  This time he would try to tempt Jesus to turn to another god.  The God that Jesus trusted in was going to send Him to the cross.  What kind of Father is that?  The devil offered Jesus an easier way, a better way of gaining the glories of the world, a way that didn’t require Him to go to the cross.  All He had to do was worship the devil.  Again, Adam, Eve, Israel, you and I have all fallen to this temptation as well.  Adam and Eve fell to it, when they made themselves their own gods and determined for themselves what was good and what was evil.  Israel fell to it, when they made for themselves a golden calf in the desert and determined for themselves who their god was and how he would be worshipped.  We fall to it, when we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.  The religions of the world today are the result of mankind’s fall to this temptation to worship someone or something other than the one true God.  Ultimately, the one we have all bowed down to is the devil, who promises glory without the cross.  But in the end, his promises are empty, and instead of glory comes shame.

But again, our Savior came to the rescue and used the Word of God to counter this temptation, too.  He said, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.’”  The devil is not God, and Jesus refused to bow down to him, in spite of the glories he promised.  The devil’s way of obtaining the glories of the world was not God’s way.  God’s way was the way of the cross, and though it would cost Him His life, that is the way Jesus would go.  Only once He had shed His blood for our sins would the true glories then follow - that of having for Himself a people purchased with His blood from every nation, tribe, people, and language to spend eternity with Him in His new creation.

With round two lost, the devil made one last attempt at getting Jesus to fall, and that was his temptation to put God to the test.  “Has God not made certain promises in His Word?  If you’re going to hold to His Word, why not see if God will keep it or not?  Oh, look!  Here’s a promise:  ‘God will command His angels concerning you, to guard you...  On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’  Let’s see if God will keep that promise.  Go ahead...  Jump off the top of the temple and see if He sends those angels to help you.”  Here again, Adam and Eve were tempted to put God to the test, when the devil made them question the truthfulness of God’s words.  “Go ahead...  Eat the fruit.  He’s not really serious about that death stuff.  He’ll protect you.  In fact, you’ll be like Him.”  Israel, too, put God to the test in the wilderness when they grumbled against Him in unbelief.  We put God to the test, when we use His promise of forgiveness as a license to sin.  “It’s okay!” the devil whispers.  “God will forgive you!”  Now, it’s not that we can’t hold God to His promises.  He wants us to do that, but in faith, not trying to see if God will really keep His Word or not.  God has proven that He does keep His Word by the fact that He sent His Son in the flesh to succeed where we failed, to overcome the devil, to die on the cross for our sins, and to rise again from the dead.  Jesus is the Amen to all God’s promises.  We don’t try to get Him to prove Himself to us like the unbelievers do, who wouldn’t believe Him even if the risen Jesus Himself appeared to them in the flesh.  We have all the proof we need in the eye-witness testimony about His life, death, and resurrection for our salvation.  

And so, Jesus silenced the devil yet once more with the Word of God:  “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”  God would protect His Son.  Jesus did not need to jump off of a building to know that.  But there would come a time when God’s protection would be taken away from Him.  That time would come at Calvary.  There the Father’s protection would be removed from Jesus, so that He might suffer God’s wrath in our place.  That was the opportune time at which the devil chose to return, only to try with one last temptation to get Jesus to disobey His Father and come down from the cross.  But though He could have called upon multitudes of angels to help Him, Jesus did not listen to the devil even then and chose instead to undergo that passion, hanging there until the end, until our redemption was finished.