The Temptation of Jesus (Luke 4:1–13) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 31)

Transcript

JRNT 82
04/27/2025
The Gospel of Luke: The Temptation of Jesus
Luke 4:1-13
Jesse Randolph


Well, after a couple of weeks off we're back in the Gospel of Luke this morning. We'll be resuming our study in Luke 4, you can go ahead and turn there now to Luke 4. And to reorient ourselves, we've gone through the account of the conception and the birth of Jesus in chapters 1-2. We've gotten into the preaching of John the Baptist in chapter 3 and the preaching of repentance that he was giving to his followers. Then we got into the account in Luke 3 of Jesus's own baptism, which culminated in that voice coming out of heaven, the voice of God the Father, where He thundered out these words, “This is My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.” And then after working our way through John the Baptist's baptism and Jesus' baptism, we worked our way through Jesus' genealogy, 77 names, all of which highlight or point to the fact that Jesus is the doubly-qualified, promised, Davidic Messiah. And you might recall that at the very end of the chronology or the genealogy in Luke 3, we see that Jesus is, verse 38, “The Son of God.”

Now as we turn to chapter 4, Luke is taking us to an entirely different scene. Remember, Luke doesn't always work in pure chronological order. And that's the case here. The material that we're getting into in chapter 4, it chronologically follows Jesus's baptism, but Luke has wedged the genealogy right between those two events. But just know that the temptation of Jesus, chronologically speaking, follows the baptism of Jesus even though there's the genealogy in between. Now recall how at Jesus' baptism God the Father again affirmed Jesus' Sonship, “You are my beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.” And I just mentioned it, but at the end of Luke 3:38 Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. And in the passage we're going to get into today in Luke 4, the ultimate enemy, God's adversary, the devil, as he attempts to tempt Jesus, the very first thing that the devil goes after is Jesus' divine Sonship. You can look at Luke 4:3 just for a preview, where the devil said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
So just make sure you're tracking. At the baptism of Jesus we have “You are My beloved Son.” At the end of the chronology of Jesus or the genealogy of Jesus we have that Jesus is the Son of God. And then here in chapter 4 we're going to see that Satan is leading with this question, “If you are the Son of God.” That threefold mention of the Sonship of Christ is not accidental. Go ahead and file that away.

But our text for this morning is going to be Luke 4:1-13, the entirety. We're going to take it all in one bite this morning. God's Word reads, “Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was being led around 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 finished, He was 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 will give You all this dominion and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I 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 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 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 left Him until an opportune time.”

Our text this morning breaks up neatly according to those three different temptations that we see Satan send Jesus' way in this passage. But before we get into the temptations themselves, Luke does give us some very important background information. Look at verse 1, it says, “Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan.” And with those words Luke is giving us this time stamp with that “returned from the Jordan” language. Recall, if you go over to Luke 3:3, that John the Baptist was preaching this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And that in doing so he was doing this in the district around the Jordan it says. Meaning John was baptizing those who were repentant in the Jordan River. And though John said in Luke 3:16 that “One is coming who is mightier than I and I'm not fit to untie the strap of his sandals,” as we read on we see that John ultimately would have the opportunity to baptize this One of whom he saw himself as being unfit in the presence of -- Jesus -- when he baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.

Now fast forwarding to Luke 4:1 we're told that now Jesus was returning from the Jordan, He was returning from that region around the Jordan. Having been baptized by John, He's now heading back from the Jordan to His home turf, the district of Galilee. And as He did so, note these two references to the Spirit of God in verse 1. First, we're told that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and then second, we're told that He was being “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days.” We'll take those in reverse order, starting with the idea here that Jesus was being “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness.” Luke is telling us with that language that the One who had been conceived through the Spirit as we saw back in Luke 1, the One who had the Holy Spirit descend on Him in bodily form in Luke 3, is now being directed by the Spirit in order to carry out His divinely appointed task. According to His perfect human nature, Christ was operating under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as His days of public ministry began. So He was led by this Spirit.

Luke also mentions, verse 1, that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit.” And what does that mean, that the God/Man was full of the Holy Spirit? Well, what it doesn't mean is that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit only in this single instance. There was never a time in our Lord's life that He wasn't full of the Holy Spirit. Rather what Luke is expressing here in context is that in connection with His temptation by Satan, Jesus was not only guided by, but yielded to the Holy Spirit. He was full to the brim of the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. And He's going to wield the sword of the Spirit, the Word, every single time one of these temptations is presented to Him. And that combination of being led by this Spirit and also being full of this Spirit is going to allow Jesus, as we're going to see, to overcome the temptations of the devil.

And further, as we'll get into in verse 14 next week, it was that combination of being led by the Spirit and being full of the Spirit that allows Him to return to Galilee it says, “in the power of the Spirit.” But we're not there yet, He'll return to Galilee next week. The scene before us this morning is that Jesus was being tempted by the devil. And Luke here is highlighting that by being both led by the Spirit and full of the Spirit, He was especially equipped to fend off the enemy's temptations, to shield Himself from the darts of the evil one.

Well, the next detail we're given is that Jesus was being led by the Spirit in the wilderness, and then reading on into verse 2 it says, “for forty days.” That should sound familiar. That forty days language is prominent in the Old Testament. In Genesis 7 we're told that God sent rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. In Exodus 24 we're told that Moses went up on Mount Horeb to visit with God for forty days and forty nights. In 1 Kings 19 we're told that Elijah went without food for forty days and forty nights in preparation for going up to Mount Horeb to meet with God. In Jonah 3 the prophet is calling out to the city of Nineveh, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And so here with those references in view, in Luke 4 by pointing out that Jesus was being led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, what Luke is doing here is linking Jesus to His people, to the people of Israel. Jesus had come as the perfect Israelite and as their perfect substitute. We'll get into that more later.

But look at these words, verse 2, reading on, that it says, “And He ate nothing during those days. And when they had finished, He was hungry.” So Jesus wasn't only in the wilderness for forty days, we're told plainly here that He didn't eat for forty days. And as we continue on in our study of Luke's Gospel, we are going to see over and over that Jesus is fully human and that we can't lose sight of the fact of His perfect humanity. We're going to see in Luke's Gospel and through cross referencing the other Gospels, Jesus in His humanity, in His life, expressing affection and anger, and sympathy, and compassion, and gratitude, and weariness, and thirst. He was truly human, and in His humanity, as we see here in verse 2, having been pushed to the limit of what any human can endure in terms of what they can go through without food, Jesus was hungry. The literal wording here is “He became hungry.” And understandably so. And as we're about to see, Satan was going to try to capitalize on that very issue, capitalize on the fact that Jesus was hungry with that first temptation. He was going to give Him a proposal,
Satan was, where this inanimate object, a stone, would become an edible object, bread.

But before we get there to that first temptation, which comes in verse 3, I want us to zero in on a few words I skipped over in verse 2, where we're told by Luke that Jesus was “being tempted by the devil.” Now I want to make a few observations here and drill down on some preliminaries about those words, “being tempted by the devil,” before we get into the three temptations in verses 3 and following. Luke says it so plainly here that Jesus was tempted by the devil. Note that he doesn't offer any defense of the devil's existence, there's no apologetic for whether the devil is real. He simply assumes, Luke does, and takes for granted that Satan exists. Jesus was being tempted by the devil.

And what do we know about the devil? Well, we know about the devil what the Bible teaches us about the devil. And the Bible says nothing about the devil wearing a red jumpsuit or having horns or a tail or a pitchfork. And if you really think about it, if the devil did show up in your living room with a red jumpsuit and horns and a tail and a pitchfork, do you think you'd be tempted by him? Absolutely not. You'd be running from him. You'd be getting out of your house and fleeing, which is the exact opposite of what he wants to do with you. The devil is far more wily, he's far more cunning, he's far more sinister than that.

What we're told in the Scriptures is that the devil disguises himself, 2 Corinthians 11, as “an angel of light.” He's not the cartoonish figure that we've all become accustomed to, you know, dancing around on hot coals with cloven hooves. No. He's a fallen angel who is real, and he's a malignant force of evil in this world. And ever since his initial act of rebellion against the God who made him, he has been an opponent of God, a deceiver of those who are made in God's image. He is the prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, the god of this age, the ruler of the demons and the powers of darkness. Ephesians 6:12, Paul says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” The devil is persistent, he's aggressive, he's fearsome. Peter says it this way in 1 Peter 5:8, “Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Neither Peter nor Paul were speaking figuratively when they spoke of the devil. They were speaking of a real, literal agent of evil.

Now in terms of his methods Satan is expert at appealing to our inherent selfishness. He's great at getting us to think that our personal interests necessarily must line up with God's interests. He's great at getting us to crave things that we don't deserve. And then when we don't get what we think we deserve, planting seeds of discord in our already darkened hearts. He gets us to mistrust God. He gets us to doubt God, the very God under whose thumb he exists. He's a self-exalting counterfeit, a sinister fake, a diabolical liar, a murderer. There's no truth in him. He's a forked-tongue deceiver, and he's capable of splashing on a veneer of piety. And he's, as we're going to see today, he's even capable of quoting the Word of God. But again, verse 2, his existence is simply asserted and assumed by Luke here, taken as a given.

Here's another preliminary I want us to work through. When we're told here that Jesus was, verse 2, “being tempted by the devil,” what we're going to see here is that Jesus didn't take the bait that was offered by the tempter. But the question that's often asked is, could Jesus have taken the bait? Could Jesus have sinned? Could Jesus have actually succumbed to the devil's temptations? And the answer is no. Not only is Jesus sinless and pure, He is what theologians call impeccable. Meaning He is incapable of sinning, not only in His deity, but in His perfect humanity. He was born into this world as the Holy One. And He is perfect, not only with respect to His divine nature, of course, but He's perfect with respect to His human nature. He is the eternally Holy One and He is this sinless and spotless Lamb who was incapable of sinning.

An illustration that's commonly given about the impeccability of Jesus Christ is that a rowboat is capable of attacking a battleship, but a rowboat can't sink a battleship. Meaning Jesus could face temptation and Satan could throw his darts His way, but Jesus, the battleship in that illustration, could never sink. Satan could place his temptations before Jesus all day long, but Jesus could not have fallen prey to them. Now He did undergo, Jesus did, real temptations. He really was tempted by a real tempter. But the point of those temptations is not so that we could, all these years later, wrestle with the question whether or not He could have sinned. The point of those temptations was to qualify Him as our sympathetic Savior in every respect. Hebrews 2:17 says, “He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to help those who are tempted.”

One more preliminary item, then we'll get to these three temptations. Verses 1-2 here, we see that we're told that for forty days Jesus was being tempted by the devil. And then we're told of these three specific temptations in the remainder of this section of Luke 4. And the question is how do Satan's temptations later in the chapter fit within this reference here in verses 1-2 to those forty days? Where did the devil's temptations fit in with the forty days mentioned at the beginning of the chapter? And the answer is Jesus was subjected to an intense forty-day period of temptation where He was being assaulted by Satan with temptation after temptation, including those that aren't recorded here. And at the conclusion or near the conclusion of those forty days the devil presented Jesus with the three specific temptations that we see listed from verses 3 and following. So there are these forty days of non-stop temptation where Satan was tempting Jesus in the wilderness. And then at the end of or near the end of those forty days, when Jesus was physically exhausted and hungry and famished, Satan pulled out all the stops in the exchanges that we'll be looking at today.

Well, enough of the background. Let's take a look at Satan's first temptation of Jesus. Look at how it's described in verse 3. It says, “And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Again, the context here is forty days of not eating. So Jesus is hungry, He's famished, He's likely trembling to the point of exhaustion and feeling weak. And the devil sees this as this naturally golden opportunity to serve up this sneering statement, “If You are the Son of God.” Now note, “If You are the Son of God,” that language there, that's not an expression of doubt by Satan. Satan has never had any doubts about Jesus's actual identity, Satan has never had any doubts about who Jesus truly is. Nor was this an attempt by Satan to get Jesus to prove that He was the Son of God by performing a miracle. No.

This is known as a first-class, conditional statement, meaning it's one that assumes the truth of the since-You-are-the-Son-of-God. Since You are the Son of God, You don't need to deny Yourself any longer. Since You are the Son of God, You don't need to go hungry. So with these words, we have them here, “If you are the Son of God” or “Since You are the Son of God,” what Satan was attempting to do was lead our Lord to a place of distrusting God the Father's providential care for Him. Jesus was in this condition in His humanity of extreme hunger and the devil senses His sense of vulnerability, and he sees this as an opportunity to capitalize.

It's as if the devil were saying to Jesus here, “You're in need right now. Your Father has left You all alone, and that need that You have is being left unfulfilled. Your Father has failed to help You in this situation and meet Your need with the hunger You're experiencing. He calls You the Son that He loves. In fact, at Your baptism He said, ‘You're My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.’ But now look what's happened, He's left You all alone, He's left You in need. So since You are the Son of God, Jesus, take action. Fulfill Your own needs, turn that stone into bread, put Yourself first, serve Yourself. Hasn't God not done what's best for You? What You need to do, Jesus, is look out for number one.” So it's in the spirit of derision, and really, this spirit of mockery of God the Father that the tempter gives these words in verse 3. “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

Now I don't want us to miss this. Note the subtlety of the temptation that's recorded here. There was nothing objectively wrong with Jesus in His humanity being hungry, experiencing hunger, just like there was nothing objectively wrong with Jesus in His humanity experiencing weariness or exhaustion or thirst. And there would be nothing objectively wrong with Jesus as God turning a stone into bread. He can do whatever He wants as God. The earth is the Lord's, it all belongs to Him. It would have been legitimate. What would have been wrong though, would be for Jesus to turn that stone into bread at Satan's beckoning, and to do so not in accordance with the will of God the Father. What would have been wrong would be for Jesus to use His own power as the Son of God for His own purposes instead of being obediently dependent upon the will of God the Father. What would have been wrong would be for Jesus to give in to any feelings of dissatisfaction or impatience or self-will to satisfy His own personal need.

What this scene portrays then is this sinister attempt by Satan to destroy God the Son's confidence in God the Father's will and power to sustain Him. Satan was trying to get Jesus to distrust God the Father by taking matters entirely into His own hands. And we can relate, can we not, to this scene of temptation here? How many times have we chomped down on Satan's tempting hook? And then we rationalize it by thinking to ourselves, “I'm in the wilderness here, Lord. I have legitimate needs that aren't being met. I have sincere itches that aren't being scratched. I'm suffering without any sense of light at the end of the tunnel. God, there are good things I deserve that You're not giving me. What are You waiting for? Maybe I need to start looking out for number one.” Well, when we go through those episodes of self-introspection and self-loathing, and if it keeps devolving, self-pity, what we need to do is consider how Jesus here responded to Satan's first temptation.

The response is in verse 4, look at what Luke records. It says, “And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, man shall not live on bread alone.’” He starts with, “It is written,” gegraptai. It's a perfect tense verb, which means it has been written, it stands written. It has the sense of “God has said it,” or we're more familiar with the expression, “thus saith the Lord.” And then comes the quote, “Man shall not live on bread alone.” Those words come from Deuteronomy 8. In fact go ahead and turn with me back to Deuteronomy 8. And as you're going there, I'll go ahead and mention that these words were delivered by God through Moses in connection with Israel's period of wilderness wandering in the desert. They'd come out of Egypt. Remember, the Lord had commanded them not to forget the Lord their God, to be diligent, to keep His commandments. They failed to do so. God lets them wander for forty years. But even then, He provides for them. And look at here in Deuteronomy 8, as God reminds the people through Moses of the various ways He had provided.

Deuteronomy 8:1 says, “The entire commandment that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to give your fathers. And you shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know,” then look at these words, “that man does not live by bread alone,” and it continues, “but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus, you shall know in your heart that Yahweh your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.” Verse six, “So you shall keep the commandments of Yahweh your God to walk in His ways and to fear Him.”

See, back to Luke 4, this first instance where Satan is tempting Jesus, it has parallels to the people of Israel's own time of testing during their own period of wilderness wandering. In the case of Israel, part of that testing involved becoming hungry, and becoming hungry so that they would trust God for their bread. In their case it became manna. And then they had to learn that “man does not live,” it says, “by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh.” They had to be reminded, Israel did, that they needed to be dependent on the word of God. That alone would nourish them because it was God's word ultimately, that caused the manna to land on the ground, that would feed them. That was the lesson that the Israelites, the stiff-necked Israelites, learned the hard way. They were continually being humbled for the various ways they grumbled against their God.

Now here in Luke 4 Jesus is doing the opposite. He's demonstrating that He believes that God would supply His need, that He believes that God would sustain Him. Jesus, knowing God's Word, knew of the plans that God had laid out for Him. He knew where He was going. He knew that He ultimately wouldn't perish in the wilderness. And with full confidence in His Father, He knew that it was more important to submit to the will of God as revealed in the Word of God than it was to fill His own stomach by performing a miracle that would provide Him with bread. So He resisted,

He resisted Satan's temptation, and He did so by quoting Scripture. He replied to the deceiver by giving words that were brief and biblical. Verse 4, “Man shall not live on bread alone.” What an important concept for us that the Savior of the world, the Son of God, for Him the ultimate touchstone of truth was the Word. The final court of appeal for every decision He made ultimately was the Word. So He quotes from Deuteronomy 8, and He's pointing out to Satan here that just as God had preserved Israel of old, surely He would sustain His own Son. While His own growling stomach surely would have loved a morsel of bread in that moment, doing the will of the Father, even if that meant being foodless and famished, that was far, far better.

So that's the first temptation scene. Now we come to the second attempt of Satan to tempt Jesus. Look at verses 5-7, it says, “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 will give you all this dominion and its glory, for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.’” Now a question that's often asked is, where did this second temptation, take place? And that question is asked because here in Luke's account in verse 5, you note that Luke doesn't get all that specific. It just says, “he led Him up.”

Now Matthew's Gospel has Matthew's own account of the temptation scene in Matthew 4. And there's a bit more detail given in that scene. In Matthew 4:8 we're told, that “The devil took Him up to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” So apparently Jesus was led up to this high mountain, and from the peak of this high mountain, Luke tells us, verse 5, that “Satan showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.” So He's on this high mountain with the devil. Jesus is given this panoramic vision of the enemy's domain, the kingdoms of the inhabited world, they're all flashing before Him. And Satan here is trying to entice Him and allure Him with this dazzling display of all that He could have. And note that the devil doesn't rely exclusively on the visual, He gets verbal in verse 6. It says, “And the devil said to Him, ‘I will give You all this dominion and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.’”

Now one thing we know about Satan, in addition to the long list I gave you earlier, is that he is self-willed, he has always been self-willed. He's a fallen angel. And we know from one of the accounts of his fall in Isaiah 14 that his self-will nature comes through over and over and over. In Isaiah 14 we're told, these are the words of Satan quoted there, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of assembly…, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” He was self-willed. He is self-willed. And that same self-willed spirit comes through in his recorded words in verse 6 of our passage, where he says, “I will give You all this dominion and its glory.” So in this scene, just kind of picture it, the devil here is motioning toward all the kingdoms of the world in this moment of time as Luke says here. And he says, “I will give you all this dominion and its glory.”

And note what he says next, still in verse 6, “for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.” Now when he says, “it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish,” he's still referring back to the kingdoms of the world that he was showing Jesus at that specific moment in time. So what the devil is saying here is, “The kingdoms of this world have been given over to me, they're mine, I'm able to do with them what I please.” And we might read that at first and think, “Well, wait a minute. God is the One who rules over this world. And Psalm 93:1 says, ‘Our Lord God reigns.’ So how could Satan make an offer like this? Was it a legitimate offer?” Well, we have to note that what Satan is offering here is not the world itself. He can't make that offer. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.” He doesn't offer the world. He qualifies it. He offers a subset of the world. He offers the kingdoms of the world. And there is a sense in which Satan does today have authority over the kingdoms of the world.

Since the entrance of sin into this world, Satan has become the ruler of this world. That's how Jesus referred to him in John 12:31. Paul calls him, in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this age” or “the god of this world.” Paul says in Ephesians 2:2 that he is “the prince of the power of the air.” Now we're also told that a future day is coming, and we'll get to this in our study in Revelation in I don't know when, but in Revelation 11 we're told that “the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He [will] reign forever and ever.” There is coming a day, as God would say to His Messiah in Psalm 2:8, “I will surely,” He says, “give the nations as Your inheritance, and the end of the earth as Your possession.”

But that day is still future, it's even future from our vantage point. It was future from the vantage point of this scene in Luke 4. It hasn't arrived yet. The reality is the world in which Jesus lived, the world in which we live, is a world in which Satan does have power, and he does have authority. Now it's borrowed authority, it's derived authority. Meaning whatever power Satan lays claim to, he only has it to the extent God permits him to have it or to exercise it. Martin Luther famously said that the devil is God's devil. But the point is that when Satan made this boastful assertion in Luke 4:6, “for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish,” it's not like he was being inaccurate. He does have authority. His authority, though, is limited, it's temporary. But it's real, meaning in context, his words of temptation here directed to Jesus, limited to the kingdoms of the world, they weren't empty. They were legitimate.

Then look at how direct and bold and forward Satan gets in verse 7. It says, “Therefore, if You worship before me, it shall all be yours.” And when you take a step back for just a moment and remember what we've studied in Luke so far, in fac,t go back with me to Luke 1. Luke 1, we have the angel Gabriel here, of course, announcing to Mary these magnificent truths about her divinely conceived Son. But look what he says, the angel of God says to Mary in verse 32, Luke 1:32. He says, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of His kingdom.” Did you catch that? God had promised that Jesus would rule over an everlasting kingdom. So while Satan might have been impressed with his own offer here to Jesus of immediate world rulership and immediate dominion and glory over the kingdoms of the world, in reality what he was promising Jesus was a shabby substitute for what God had already promised Jesus. Satan's offer, if I can put it this way, was actually pretty lame, because what he was offering Jesus was something that had already been promised to Him by God. It was going to be His anyway. And that's what the Deceiver does, that's what Satan does. He fishes in the hearts of discontented men and women, and he seeks to reel in those who are going to fail to see the glimmer of his hook. And Jesus here, God Incarnate, was the biggest possible fish that Satan could catch.

And what might have been the possible allure here for Jesus? How could this bait that Satan threw in the water possibly have been a temptation to God the Son? Well, what Satan was offering the Lord here, how this could be a legitimate temptation, was that it was a shortcut to the throne. See, in the councils of God it had long been predicted through the prophets, the Old Testament prophets, that the Messiah would first have to suffer before He could establish His rulership. His path to glory would be lit with lamps of suffering. You know it's often said that the cross had to come before the crown. That's right. And Jesus here wasn't about to turn His back on His calling. He wasn't about to scrap the plans the Father had laid out for Him. He wasn't about to take the bait that the devil was throwing in the water. He knew, Jesus did, that He had been called to walk the lowly path in life. He knew He'd been called to serve and struggle and suffer. He knew He had been called to this long road of obedience to the will of His Father, not a shortcut to glory. Now certainly He did know that the ultimate plan was that He would have sovereign rulership over the nations. Again, Psalm 2. But He knew that those days of glory couldn't come before Gethsemane. He wasn't about to shift His allegiance from God the Father to Satan.

And as was the case with His first temptation, with His second temptation He again draws from the Word of God. Look at Luke 4:8, it says, “And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’” And note those first words again, “It is written.” Critical words which highlight Jesus's unequivocal conviction that this discussion He was starting to have with Satan was going to be settled by the Word of God. Full of the Spirit, yielded to the Spirit, the Lord took the devil back to Deuteronomy once again. In fact, turn with me again, (I should tell you, I should have told you ahead of time to keep a finger in Deuteronomy), this time we're going to look at Deuteronomy 6. This is the passage Jesus cites in reference to the second temptation.

And the original context here is Moses is warning the people that when they finally get to the land that God had promised them, they were going to struggle against this heart-level temptation to praise themselves and forget to worship the God who had brought them into the land. And not only that, they would face this sinister temptation to chase after the gods of the land, the fake gods of all the various “-ite” groups of the land. Let's start here in Deuteronomy 6:4, known as the “Shema.”

Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, oh Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as phylacteries between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Then it will be when Yahweh your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you great and good cities which you did not build, and houses full of things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you will eat and be satisfied, then beware lest you forget Yahweh, who brought you from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery.” Then look at this, verse 13, “Yahweh, your God, you shall fear. In Him you shall serve, and by His name you shall swear.” That's the passage Jesus is alluding to in Luke 4:8. And then rounding it out, verses 14-15, “You shall not walk after other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for Yahweh your God in the midst of you is a jealous God, lest the anger of Yahweh your God be kindled against you, and He destroy you from the face of the earth.”

So verse 13 is what Jesus is alluding to in this second temptation. In response to this second temptation He's drawing on words that were initially given to Israel to highlight yet again the fact that He is the ultimate Israelite. Israel would go on to violate these warnings in Deuteronomy 6 as they stumbled over and over in worshiping all the various false gods of the peoples surrounding them. Jesus here, by quoting this section of Scripture, is declaring that He would not fall into that same trap. He wouldn't go after any other god, including the god of this world, Satan. He wouldn't fail as Israel has failed. He pointed Satan back to Deuteronomy. This was His way of saying to Satan that He was rejecting the devil's offer.

And note the simplicity of the response here, back to Luke 4:8. You know, He doesn't debate whether the devil actually has dominion and glory, does He. He doesn't ask Satan what exactly has been handed over to him, as he claims. He doesn't push back on the devil's assertion here that he is able to give dominion and authority to whomever he wishes. No. He simply quotes Scripture back at Satan, shuts the conversation down, and Satan has no hope of setting his hook in Him.

And that's the same choice that's put before us day by day as Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, launching his cunning assaults toward us from whichever angle, at whatever time, as he throws our way desires we shouldn't harbor, images we shouldn't look at, thoughts we shouldn't have, people we shouldn't be around, jokes we shouldn't engage in, stories we shouldn't tell, memories we shouldn't bring back to the forefront of our minds. The question is whether we're going to repel those assaults by going back to the absolute authority of the Word of God, drawing from it as the guiding principle of our lives as Jesus did here, that arsenal of truth that we need to withstand the flaming darts of the evil one. Or instead are we going to fire back with blanks because our mind hasn't been filled with the Word of God? Or instead are we going to wield a water pistol of worldly wisdom because we haven't had our minds filled with the Word of God? And the last time I checked, the water pistol doesn't really work against a prowling lion.

Two for two. Satan has made these two specific offers of temptation to Jesus, Jesus has rejected them both. In both of these instances He's batted back the enemy with this appeal to the Word of God.

That now brings us to this third temptation, we see it in verses 9-11. It says, “And he,” Satan there, “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 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.”’” So Satan led Christ from the wilderness, that was the setting of the first temptation, to the mountain, that was the scene of His second temptation. And now it's back in Jerusalem in the temple. Verse 9, “And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple.” And when they arrived at the temple, He's there in the pinnacle, that's the highest point of the wall of the temple. Most would say this is the ledge of the southeast corner of the temple from which Jesus, right there with Satan next to Him, would have looked down this sloping 450 feet into the Kidron Valley. Enough to make anybody dizzy as you look down. And Satan said to Him, verse 9, “If You are the Son of God.” That should sound familiar. This is now the second time that Satan is appealing to Jesus' status as the Son of God. And again, Satan is not questioning whether Jesus actually is the Son of God, He knows that Jesus is the Son of God. He knows that Jesus has been sent to earth by God the Father. He's just a persistent accuser, he's a dogged adversary. And sensing perhaps that he's losing his arguments with Christ, here he goes for the jugular. He challenges Jesus, into verse 9, to “throw Yourself down from here.”

And then in verses 10-11 the devil tries a new tactic. He reaches down to the bottom of his bag of tricks and he quotes Scripture back to Jesus. Verses 10-11 say, “For it is written.” That's the same word Jesus used back in verses 4 and 8 to withstand Satan's temptations, “gegraptai,” it has been written, it stands written, God has said, thus saith the Lord. Satan's now using the same word. And then here comes the devil's attempt to quote Scripture. Verse 10, “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.” So in His references to Scripture Jesus is going to Deuteronomy. Satan doesn't go to Deuteronomy, Satan instead goes to Psalm 91, our Scripture reading for this morning. Go and turn there with me to Psalm 91. Specifically, as he's quoting this, the devil is drawing from verses 11-12 of Psalm 91. Psalm 91:11 reads this way. We're going to toggle back and forth between these two, so keep a finger in Psalm 91 when we go back to Luke.

But Psalm 91:11 says, “For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Now very clearly, Psalm 91, the original context is all about God being one's refuge, God being one's fortress. This psalm communicates the comforting truth that God protects and He shields His own. In fact, look up the page at Psalm 91:1, “He who abides in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to Yahweh, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.” Or if you look down at verses 14-15 we see more of this language of the protective nature of God for His own. Verse 14, “I will protect him, I will set him securely on high.” That's God Himself speaking. Or verse 15, “I will be with him in his distress.”

Now back to Luke, look back at Luke 4:10-11. What Satan was communicating to Jesus here in this third temptation was that He should throw Himself down from the temple in Jerusalem really as a mark of His Messiahship. And Satan is challenging Jesus to perform that stunt by quoting Psalm 91. The thought process apparently behind Satan's challenge here is, if God has promised to protect His righteous ones as He's promised to do in Psalm 91, well, then surely He would do so in the case of His Messiah. Right? Surely He would do so in the case of His Anointed One. He wouldn't allow the Anointed One to land in an undignified splat on the ground. Right? So what better way then for Jesus to prove that He was in fact the Messiah -- this is Satan's line of logic here -- than to perform this remarkable feat. And to do so around all the people in the temple there in Jerusalem. And they could witness it, and they could see that He wouldn't fall, that He wouldn't splat. He'd be lifted up and they would immediately fall down and worship at His feet.

Well, Satan's motivations, though masked, were obvious. What Satan wanted to happen here was for Jesus to die here. He didn't want Jesus to fulfill His mission in going all the way to Calvary. He didn't want Jesus to make it to the cross. He wanted Jesus's life to end prematurely in this unceremonious death dive. And the way that he attempted to bring about this outcome was, of all things, by quoting Scripture. But being the Deceiver, being the Father of Lies, even in quoting Scripture Satan did so in this very characteristically deceptive way. Look back at Psalm 91 again. Psalm 91, and keep your finger right there in Luke 4, we're going to do a quick flip flop from one to the other. Okay?

Psalm 91:11-12 zero in on this language. “For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” Now back to Luke 4:10. “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.” What's the difference? What's missing? The words, “in all your ways.” Those are present in Psalm 91, they're not present in Luke 4. The devil took out the words “in all your ways.” But why? What's the significance?

Well, when those words are included as they were back in Psalm 91, the meaning, the import in context of Psalm 91 as a whole is that God will protect the righteous man in all his, get this, righteous ways. That's the context of the meaning “in all your ways” in the setting of Psalm 91. Those words of Psalm 91 as a whole are describing the man who dwells in the shelter of the Most High. He lives righteously as a natural outpouring of dwelling in the shelter, the shadow of the Most High. He's abiding in the shadow of the Almighty, he has found refuge in the Lord, and he lives accordingly. He is not only righteous by declaration, he's righteous by application, he's living a righteous life. Now when you omit those words, “in all your ways,” meaning in context in all your righteous ways, the meaning is shaded ever so slightly.

Because now what the implication is by Satan in Luke 4 is that God will protect the righteous one no matter what he does—whether he's acting righteously or unrighteously. Whether he's acting righteously or foolishly. Whether he's acting righteously or, putting it in our context, getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car. Whether he's acting righteously or taking his paycheck to the casino and betting it all on black. Whether he's acting righteously or pursuing that adulterous relationship. Or here in the context of Luke 4, whether He's acting righteously or acting presumptuously by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple. The devil knew what he was doing. He redacted a few key words of Psalm 91 in order to get Jesus to do what he wanted Him to do. Satan twisted Scripture in an attempt to bring Jesus' earthly ministry to this premature end.

But he failed. He failed to get Jesus to do what he wanted Him to do, because Jesus picked up on that deceitful omission. He didn't fall into the trap. He knew, Jesus did, that He had to go to the cross to die for the sins of the world. And so He shut Satan down yet again. But here again He doesn't call out the devil, like I just did, for omitting those words from Psalm 91. He acts quickly, He acts decisively, He cites a Scripture of His own. Look at Luke 4:12, “And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘It is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” So for the third time in a row Jesus quotes Scripture. And for the third time in a row He quotes from Deuteronomy. The reference here is from Deuteronomy 6:16. I won't turn there, you're welcome to turn there.

But right there it says in Deuteronomy 6:16, “You shall not put Yahweh your God to the test as you tested Him at Massah.” Those words, “as you tested him at Massah,” those are pointing back to a scene in Exodus 17 where the people of Israel are accusing Moses of having been cruel and bringing them out of Egypt and into the desert. And they're accusing him of trying to destroy them, and they're grumbling and complaining. They're refusing to trust God's promise that He would provide for them in the wilderness. And you might remember, that's where they demand that Moses produce water from a rock. And it happens. God gives the Israelites what they wanted, they got their water, they got it from that rock. But what they also did is they had put God to the test. And that was the big problem. They put God to the test, and that really put a wedge between them and their relationship to this God who had always been so good to them.

Now by quoting that passage, Deuteronomy 6:16, in this third temptation account, Jesus is drawing a parallel. He's saying here He's not going to jump as the devil was saying He should do, because He wasn't going to put God to the test. He wasn't going to force God's hand. He wasn't going to treat God as though God is somehow on probation and He needs to prove Himself by rescuing Jesus midair from harm. Instead Jesus, yielded to the Spirit, willing to follow the plans of God the Father, refused. Israel was the one who had tested God, and then they ultimately showed they didn't trust God in the Deuteronomy account. But their Messiah, Jesus, He did trust God, and He refused to put God to the test. His mission was to go to the cross to die, and He wouldn't allow His life to be cut short by following Satan's suggestion.

So three temptations by Satan, three rejections of those temptations by Jesus. And then look at the final outcome here in verse 13, it says, “And when the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.” Now we read those and they might initially sound like words of victory. Like yeah, Jesus won. Hooray. But these are actually pretty ominous words, pretty dark words. Yes, the devil left Him, he departed from Jesus after these three unsuccessful attempts at temptation, but we know the battle wasn't over. Though Satan had been struck down in this instance by the sword of the Spirit, and though he did in this instance have to acknowledge Jesus as the victor, Satan's retreat here was only momentary, it was only temporary. That's layered into the words here at the end of verse 13, “he left Him until an opportune time.” Meaning a more suitable point in time, just for a season, just for a little while. He had lost the battle, but the war was not over.

Now I want to, in my few remaining moments here, bring this over to us and our context in terms of some takeaways and application. After we consider this scene involving Satan's temptation of Jesus, what are some takeaways that we can chew on here? One is this, that we simply need to always be aware of and on guard against the wiles of Satan. He's real, he has real power. He roars, and he's always seeking someone to devour. He laid the pressure on Job, he lured Peter, he tempted Jesus, and he lives and prowls today. Now what he can't do is snatch away our eternal destiny, our salvation is secure. Christ, the sure and steady anchor. But he definitely does make that road bumpy for us while we await in glory.

J. C. Ryle once said about Satan, “If he cannot destroy our souls, he will at least bruise our heels.” So we can't ignore his presence, we can't ignore his person, and we can't ignore his power. We need to put on the full armor of God, Ephesians 6, and withstand the flaming darts of the evil one. We need to, as it says in James 4:7, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” So we need to stay on guard.

Second, we need to wield our swords. Three times we saw today the enemy sought to tempt Jesus, to lead Him astray, to distract Him, to divert Him, to get Him off mission. And three times Jesus resisted the devil. And all three times the Lord used the same weapon -- “the sword of the Spirit,” Ephesians 6:17, “which is the word of God.” Remember back in verse 1 how Luke records that Jesus was full of the Spirit. Well, one of the ways that you know that a person is full of the Spirit is if they are filled with the truth of God's Word. And over and over what we see here is that Jesus appeals to what had been written in the Scriptures. And I don't know about you, but that's a convicting thought to me to think that if the God/Man was that reliant upon the Scriptures, how much more should a mere mortal like I be. How much more should I be laboring, should we all be laboring, to read the Word, to study the Word, to hide the Word in our heart, to treasure the Word in our heart so that, Psalm 119:11, we may not sin against the God who made us.

And finally, what we've seen today reminds us that we do serve a sympathetic Savior. What the narrative this morning has shown us is that Jesus really did face the same categories of temptation that we all face in our lives. There have been many who have linked these three temptations in Luke's account to what John says in 1 John 2:16, that what we face as we walk through this world are the “lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.” What that means is that we really do serve, as Hebrews 4:15 says, a Savior who can sympathize with our weaknesses, a Savior who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet of course, without sin. And what that should motivate us to do as we face temptations of our own, because we will, is to go more regularly to the Lord in prayer as we're facing that temptation. And if we succumb to that temptation, to confess our sin and to seek forgiveness for our sin and to cast every one of our burdens on a Savior who has been through temptations like we are.

I'm going to close with these words from a classic hymn, one which surely many of you are very familiar with – “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” It was penned by Martin Luther originally in German just about a decade or so after he nailed the 95 Theses to the door at Wittenberg. And in the third stanza of that hymn, I think this is so appropriate because you see Satan mentioned here and you see the Word mentioned here, which is the very equation that Jesus applies in defeating Satan. This is from the third stanza of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” It says,
“And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us.
We will not fear for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him.”
Amen.

Let's pray. Father, thank You so much for this time of worship this morning that we've been privileged to enjoy. Thank You for the reminders from Your Word, which is true, which is truth, which is clear, which is applicable, that when we face temptations, temptations that may be in many cases initiated by the god of this world, Satan, we have at our disposal the very weapons that You have given us to fight against them. Those weapons are the very words of the Scriptures, the Word of God. Help us to be mindful of the example of Jesus in this narrative as He was tempted, as He was lured in various ways by Satan. Every single time He went back to the fountain of truth that is given in your Word. He fought back with the sword of the Spirit. May we, as we live in these bodies of flesh in this life, seek to do the same. Help us to be mindful of what Your truth reveals. Help us to be skillful in applying it to our lives. May You be glorified as we go back and back to
Your Word. It's in Jesus' name we pray these things, amen.