4.6
The three temptations (Luke 4:1-13)
Immediately after Jesus was baptized, God’s Spirit led Him away from the crowds and into the wilderness. God set apart this time before Jesus’ public ministry to confirm His way of holiness on earth. For forty nights and days Jesus lived with wild beasts, eating and drinking nothing. For forty days -- the same number of days Moses was with God on Mount Sinai -- He was in the wilderness -- as Israel wandered in the wilderness. During those days, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. Before starting His public ministry, He would suffer the full extent of human temptation where spiritual deceptions and sin are born and hope for communion with God dies
For forty days Jesus neither ate nor drank in the wilderness, and He became hungry. Then, the devil spoke. “If You are the Son of God,” he said, “tell this stone to become bread.” This advice sounds reasonable. Jesus was hungry, so why not satisfy Himself? If He is God’s Son, why not prove it by performing a miracle that can feed His hunger? Why not satisfy the needs of both His stomach and identity at the same time? Why not also convince Satan that Jesus is who God says He is, so that Satan can agree and confirm who God says He is, if indeed He is anybody at all? As reasonable as Satan’s advice sounds, it insinuates doubt, distrust, and the impossible task of proving what is. It may be a most subtle doubt, the barest of challenges, but in this subtlety we witness how the smallest variance from the truth can mask enormous spiritual differences, as great as the one that exists between Jesus and the devil
As Son of God, Jesus could have responded by commanding God’s armies to bury Satan beneath the earth’s deepest recesses. Instead, Jesus barely answered him. The devil’s taunt presses the most charged buttons of the human appetite and ego. You’re hungry, Satan was saying, so feed yourself. If You are God’s Son, prove it to me. It’s not enough to be, You must prove Yourself to me. I will decide whether or not You are. The hungers in our bellies and egos forever agitate inside us to be satisfied, to prove and be proven, to justify and be justified by the things we do and say. But Satan couldn’t provoke the kind of response from Jesus that we would have given. Jesus was not in the wilderness to prove anything to anyone, especially not Satan. His time in the wilderness was one of preparation, of waiting on His Father to completely prepare Him for His work on earth, and to send His ministering angels to feed Him (Matthew 4:11). Jesus simply answered with the words of Deuteronomy 8:2, “man shall not live on bread alone” but, as both Jesus and Satan know this verse continues, “by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord”
The mouth of God speaks creation into being with words expressing His will and wisdom that do all things well, revealing the form and nature of His faithful ways that so generously share His goodness. The mouth of God breathes life from nothing, sustains life and penetrates every depth to its foundation with the breath of His love and continual concern. The mouth of God speaks to every heart to prepare it for the coming of His consuming kiss, holding and softening every heart with His tender care so that it swells with the blessings of God and beats with the wonder of being seen and known, of being made alive and new by God Himself who has always been present and patiently waiting for the moment to impress His most tender and precious kiss on His beloved
It was the truth of this simple verse that God wanted Israel to know and live by. For forty years He tried and tested her in the wilderness to bring out what was in her heart so that she could see what God saw in her. Over and over He told her: don’t entrust your life to food, water or idols. Trust Me for your needs and for all things. In those forty years, that whole generation died in the wilderness because it did not trust God. Only Joshua and Caleb survived and entered the promised land. Israel’s heart was tested in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2) and revealed a heart that did not feed on God. But Jesus looked to God in His hunger and need. Jesus’ heart was tested and proven in the wilderness and what came forth was a heart devoted to His Father. Jesus -- whose name is Joshua in Hebrew, and is from Caleb’s tribe of Judah, -- was tested to the uttermost, and what emerged was a holy trust in His Father’s faithfulness
The second of the devil’s temptation was not so subtle. “If You worship before me, (the world’s kingdoms) shall all be Yours.” If there is the slightest inclination in Jesus to own power as we know it, He would have taken that offer in an instant. But power apart from His Father means nothing to Him. He knows no real power exists apart from God (Psalm 62:11). Again, Jesus quoted from the Jewish Scripture, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” True life does not serve power. Life serves the Giver of life, to whom all power belongs. Only God is true King. Only God is worth serving in worship. Jesus did not forget this truth for a moment
The devil’s third and last temptation took Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, to the top of its pinnacle. Again he taunted Jesus, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.” Satan knows it is written that God will protect His anointed One, His Messiah, from harm (Psalm 91:11-2). Throw Yourself down and we’ll see if God will protect You. Let me see if You are His anointed One. Yes, Satan knows Scripture very well, better than most. But his spirit is foul and dirty and he has no knowledge of the Holy Scripture inspired by God’s Holy Spirit. Once again, Jesus responded with a simple Bible verse. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus will not test His Father because He has no cause to test Him. He knows what is in God as God knows what is in Jesus, and Jesus knows what is in Satan, and He has no part in him. But He continued to go through Satan’s tests to their extreme, so that when Jesus’ time was complete, He could be with all who cannot endure their temptation and bring them through it. That is why Jesus came (Hebrews 2:18)
Once Jesus overcame Satan’s temptations, He was ready to minister to the people in the power of God’s Spirit. His testing in the wilderness prepared Him to fully receive the Holy Spirit’s power to do the work of God. But we may still be asking, why? Why did Jesus have to prove to His Father that He could not be tempted by Satan, when He so absolutely refused to prove Himself to Satan? If proving is wrong, why prove at all? Furthermore, if God knows His Son, why would He need to test Him? There is much in these questions’ answers that can help us fathom the meaning of Jesus’ life on earth and how very different God’s intention and will are from ours
Proving some one or thing requires testing to discover its hidden nature and value, so as to judge correctly. Testing starts with ignorance, doubt or distrust. We test to find out what a person or thing possesses and then decide if it passes or fails, is good or bad, accepted or rejected. We don’t completely know or trust so we must test and see what some one or thing is made of and how well it can perform. When God tests or proves a thing, His purposes are very different. God doesn’t test to discover hidden values and abilities. He already knows the value of all things and their limits. When God tested Israel in the wilderness to see what was in her heart, it wasn’t so He could get to know her better. When God tests and proves, His purpose is to reveal in His refining truth, because it is His nature to reveal truth. There is no darkness or hiding in Him, no lack in Him to complete what He begins. God proved Israel’s heart in the wilderness and revealed that it did not trust Him. God proved Jesus’ heart in the wilderness and what came forth is a heart trusting His Father, available to learn obedience from His Father
Why test to reveal what God already knows? Because we don’t know and He wants to reveal to us who He is and who we are to Him, so that we can trust HIs refining work in us. God wanted Israel to know herself better, so He tested her heart in the wilderness. God tested His Son in the wilderness so that we can learn His heart in His Son who He sent to reveal and do His will. This is God’s will: that we witness the kind of relationship He wants with us, the same one that He has with His Son, this Son of His love who He sent to be our way to Himself. God’s proving refines us to know and be known by Him in the same way He knows and is known by His Son