Luke 4:1–13

0:01 One of the most famous stories in the entire Bible is the story of David and Goliath. So if you've ever been to Sunday school, at least very much, or if you've been a Christian for very long, then you know the story, right? Little David, the shepherd boy, goes into the camp of the Israelites where King Saul is cowering behind some baskets because the champion of this enemy army, the Philistines, this giant nine-foot-tall guy with a spearhead that, you know, as big as a man's head, all all of that. He's standing out there taunting the armies of Israel and saying, send out somebody to fight me. And if I beat your guy, then you will all be our slaves. And if he beats me, then we'll be your slaves. And little David, the shepherd boy, comes in. He's, you know, never fought many battles at all. He's killed a lion with his bare hands, which is not nothing, right? And yet he's never been in a war. But he says, look, there's the king over there, Saul. He's cowering among a bunch of baskets. But I know the Lord. I'll go out and I'll take out Goliath. And so he does. He tries on the king's armor. It's too big. He leaves the armor behind. And so he goes out with nothing but a

1:04 slingshot and five smooth stones. And he fires one of the stones at the giant, hits him in the head, and he falls over dead. I think that's probably one of the most famous stories in the Bible because we misuse it. We tend, with just about every Bible study, to try to figure out what's in this story for me. What is it about me that this story is trying to tell? Why don't we do that with other things in our lives?

1:37 I mean, I want you to think for just a second. What is your favorite, most evocative, most emotionally resonant movie? Just think about it for just a second. What is the most evocative, most emotionally resonant movie that you think you have ever seen? Different people are going to have different answers, right? For some of you, it's going to be something like The Holiday. For others, it's going to be like Gladiator, right? It's just going to be different things in the room. But for every single one of us, I bet there's a movie that is so emotionally resonant that it comes to mind immediately.

2:12 What did you get out of that movie for you? Probably not that much. And you're kind of thinking, that's a weird question, right? I don't know. I mean, if I'm watching Gladiator, if I'm watching one of my other favorite, most emotionally resonant movies, I don't have to immediately put myself in the movie. I don't have to figure out which one of these characters is me, even though I would love to walk through fields like this, going, I am Maximus, you know, whatever. I do that in my own dreams sometimes. But when I'm watching the movie, I'm not trying to figure out where I fit in it.

2:44 I'm not trying to figure out which character is supposed to be fabled up to become me. And yet we think that's how we have to read the Bible every time. Who am I? And David and Goliath, am I David? I want to be David. The movies make me out to be David because you've got to face your giants, right? But friend, you're not David and you know you're not David, right? I mean, you can do all kinds of things. You can draw all kinds of spiritual, you know, pseudo lessons from that. That if you just, you know, be courageous and really trust God very hard, you can slay your giants.

3:20 And you get all fired up about that. But then you kind of sit back and you think, you know what? That's not really how it works. Like, it's just not how it works. It's just not true that if I am just courageous and trust God very, very hard, I will slay every giant. That's not true. Most of the time, I know my giants, and most of the time, they kick my tail. It's not a true spiritual lesson to take from that story. So what is? Well, think about your movie again. What makes that movie emotionally evocative?

3:50 Most of the time, it's because you just get swept up in the story. You yourself kind of disappear as you watch what's happening with the other characters in the story. And most of the time, that's what's supposed to happen with the Bible. You're not supposed to find yourself in it. You're supposed to watch what God is doing. In fact, I think a lot of times the reason people find the Bible boring is because we are so constantly trying to find ourselves in it. And then when we manage to shoehorn ourselves into every single story, usually as the hero, we look at the lessons that are drawn from that and we go, that's really just not all that profound at all.

4:29 Or if you just let yourself get swept up in the story, you'd see more of what God is doing and you'd find the Bible more interesting. And that's true of the story of David and Goliath, right? I mean, that story is really answering two questions. It's answering the question, who is the king? And then it's answering the question, who is the enemy? So who is the king, right? That's the whole question. Is it Saul who's over here refusing to fight his people's battles and he's hiding over in the baskets? Is that who the rightful king is? Or is the rightful king this little guy who comes out and says, you know what, in the power of the Lord, I'll fight the people's battles for them.

5:05 I'll be their champion. I'll stand as their substitute and fight this guy. And then this story goes on. You find out, yeah, David is the one who's been chosen by God to be the rightful king because he does the things that kings do. He fights his people's battles. But then there's another whole layer underneath it. I mean, have you ever thought about linking up the story of David and Goliath with the story of Genesis 3 that we read earlier in the service? Who is the enemy in the story of David and Goliath? Yeah, it's Goliath, right? It's the army of the Philistines.

5:35 But do you know who Goliath is presented as in the story? Let me give you a couple of hints. He wears armor that is made of scales like a serpent. And then how does David kill him? He crushes his skull. Just like Genesis 3 said the Messiah would do to the serpent. Friends, David and Goliath is not a story about you.

6:09 It's a story about Jesus and what he does to save you. And we're not preaching on David and Goliath this morning. We're actually continuing our study of the book of Luke today. And we've come to another one of these most famous passages in the Bible. It's the temptation of Jesus by Satan out in the wilderness. And we make a very similar mistake with this story that we do with almost every other Bible story. We try immediately to figure out what's in it for me. When actually what we're supposed to be doing is watching in awe as our king goes out to fight and defeat an enemy that we could never defeat for ourselves.

6:48 It's not meant to be a training video to teach you how to fight Satan. It's meant to remind you that you can't fight Satan. And every time we as a human race have tried, he has kicked our tails. And now there's one who has come whose tail he cannot kick because he crushes his head. Luke, if you turn over to Luke chapter 4, that's where we're going to be. Page 859 in a red pew Bible. He's actually been building up to this moment for some time now as he's been showing us little by little who Jesus really is.

7:21 So thinking back a couple weeks, two weeks ago we saw John the Baptist point Jesus out as the Messiah King, right? This is the one whose sandals I am not fit even to untie. We saw Jesus then get baptized by John. The Spirit of God comes down and lands on him in a physical form like a dove. And then there's this booming voice from heaven that identifies Jesus as the Son of God. That's what we saw a couple of weeks ago. Last week, then, we looked at how Luke interrupts this whole narrative to show, essentially, Jesus' bloodline. And it's a bloodline that points it.

7:53 Remember, it's Luke flashing Jesus' credentials at you to say he's worthy. He's credentialed up to be able to do the job that he's about to do. Because he's really and truly the son of David, so he can be the Messiah. He's really and truly the son of Adam, so he can represent humanity. And he's the son of God, so he can do all of this and win it. Well, in all of that, over the last couple of weeks, Luke's aim has basically been to try to convince you and me as his readers of Jesus' identity. Here's who he is.

8:26 Well, today, the emphasis changes a little bit because all of a sudden, as chapter 4 opens, it's now time for Jesus to act on that identity. To do the things that are required of him because of who he is. So in other words, not just to be the king, but to act as king. To fight in his people's place and win a battle that they proved over and over and over again they cannot win for themselves. And so he goes out immediately to meet Satan in the wilderness.

8:56 Let's read it. Luke chapter 4 verse 1. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It's written, Man shall not live by bread alone. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.

9:29 If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. And he took him to Jerusalem and set him 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. Jesus answered him, It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

10:06 This is just an incredibly dramatic story, and I think we tend to make sort of two mistakes with it. The first mistake that we make, that's really the worst of it, is that we say, okay, this is a training video from Jesus about how to defend against the temptations of the devil, right? That's the first thing we do wrong, try to stick ourselves into it too quickly. The other thing we do is that we misread it sometimes as just a kind of personal story about Jesus. This is something that Jesus did just for himself. And, you know, good job, Jesus. You managed personally to stand against the temptations of the devil.

10:41 But what I want you to see this morning is that the temptation of Jesus is way, way more than just a story of how Jesus overcame his own personal temptations. What's going on here is not just that. This is actually Jesus' declaration of war against hell on your behalf. This is not just personal to him. He's doing this for his people. He's doing what he was always meant to do as the Messiah and representative and champion of his people.

11:14 I mean, think back to the last couple of chapters of Luke. Think about how he sets this up. So in 3.22, you've got this voice that comes and says who Jesus is. This is my beloved son. And Luke, it's you are my beloved son. And in you, I am well pleased. And then immediately after that, once heaven declares who he is, Luke pauses everything. He writes out this genealogy and links Jesus up as son of David, son of Adam, and son of God. And then after all of that is done, once Jesus' identity is established, immediately, Matthew even uses the word.

11:50 Immediately, the Spirit carries him out away into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Identity, action, that's what happens. So what's going on there? What is exactly happening here on a cosmic scale? Well, what Luke wants you to see here, and Matthew, and Mark, it's mentioned in all three of them. What they want you to see here is that at his baptism, Jesus is essentially fully stepping into the roles that God intended for him to fill. So he's taking office, you might say, as the Messiah.

12:20 And once that office is taken, immediately he starts to do what the Messiah does. He goes out to fight his people's battles for them. So look, if you don't get anything else from this sermon this morning, I want you to get this. This text is showing you what Jesus does. He stands as your representative and champion to fight and win the great battle that you could never win for yourself. And that's a good thing, too. So I think the main idea is that, look, if your eternity were left up to you, it would all be hopeless.

12:57 If your eternity, fighting the battles necessary to win a good eternity, were left up to you, everything would be hopeless. But praise God, it's not hopeless. I'm going to tell you why today. Now, we're actually going to do something slightly differently today. We're going to back up and look a little more carefully first at chapter 3, verse 22, this voice that comes out of heaven because it's just, it's packed up with meaning and it's actually kind of the starting gun of the story. I mean, the way Matthew puts it is the voice comes out of heaven and immediately Jesus is taken into the wilderness.

13:29 Luke breaks it up with the genealogy, but that's just to show you some more credentials. So it kind of works the same, voice out of heaven, out into the wilderness to be tempted. So we're going to look at that and then we're going to see how as soon as that's done, basically as soon as the messianic armor is strapped on, so to speak, Jesus goes out to meet the enemy that's conquered his people over and over and over. So two points to the sermon. Number one, looking at that voice out of heaven, who Jesus is. And then number two, looking at the temptation itself, what Jesus wins.

14:01 All right, let's dive into it and see what we've got. Number one, looking at chapter 3, verse 22, who Jesus is. So a couple of weeks ago, we looked at the first half of chapter 3, and we focused on John the Baptist and his message. And we only took the time then to look briefly at Jesus' baptism. I just kind of referred to it and said, hey, we'll be back to this in a couple of weeks. So here we are. But I want to take some extra time this morning to do that, to look at that verse in more detail, because it's critical for understanding what's going on.

14:34 If all you think of the baptism as in this word that you are my beloved son and whom I am well pleased, if all you're thinking of that being is a kind of sloppy wet kiss from father to son, like very personal between them, you have missed the point entirely. It is not me looking into my kid's eyes at graduation and saying, I am so proud of you. That is not it. This is an official act, a cosmic act where something huge has happened. I mean, this is literally the moment. When the Old Testament gives way to the New Testament, and John's ministry is completely fulfilled.

15:09 Like, he's done, right? I mean, he gets ushered off the stage extremely quickly. Luke even says he's thrown in prison, and the next time we see him, he's questioning, and then he gets his head chopped off. Like, John is done, because he's a prophet, he's pointing forward, he's the last of the Old Testament prophets. He's pointing forward like all the rest did to the Messiah, only he gets to say not just he's coming, but, oh, there he is. He's the last one that points to the Messiah. Of course, it didn't go exactly like John expected when he met the Messiah. John was expecting something totally different than what actually happened.

15:43 Matthew actually gives it to us in more detail, the first meeting between John the Baptist and Jesus. So let me just read you a couple of verses. This is Matthew chapter 3. So then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan, to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you. That is just not what John expected.

16:17 I mean, he may have known that he was going to get to be the prophet that sort of pointed out the Messiah. I remember him even leaping in his mother's womb when Mary, the mother of Jesus, came in. And he recognized his Lord even in utero. But that's not what John expected. His message was to a sinful people, calling them to prepare for the coming of the king. And his expectation was that when that king came, John was going to herald his arrival with everything a king deserved. All the pomp and circumstance.

16:48 What he never expected was for the king to come to him, asking to be baptized in the same way as all these sinners who are repenting. John just doesn't get it. I shouldn't be baptizing you, Jesus. You should be baptizing me. So John objects. Jesus responds by saying, let it be so for now. So in other words, he's saying, John, you're not being dumb. I realize this is weird. Any other time you'd be absolutely right because I don't need to repent of sins in the same way.

17:21 So you're right, John. But right now, for this moment, it is right for us to do this. It's right for me to be baptized just like all of these people. Now, why? Well, it's going to take us a few minutes to get to the answer to that, so hold it in your mind. But I think it really all becomes clear in what both Matthew and Luke tell us happens next. So John baptizes Jesus, and immediately, it's just worth noting that it says when he came up out of the water, Jesus was immersed, right? When he came up out of the water, Luke says it there in 21-22, the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove.

17:56 And then you get this voice from heaven saying, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. Now, what does that mean? I mean, it's not just personal pride from father to son. It's an official moment. Something is happening. And those couple of sentences, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, are packed with meaning. And it helps us to understand why it was so right and fitting for Jesus to be baptized with the same baptism that was offered to sinners. So three things that we're told in those couple of sentences about Jesus.

18:29 First of all, that phrase in verse 22, you are my beloved son. Now, so far, Luke hasn't done a ton with that idea of son. He's told us in chapter 1, he shall be called the son of the most high, right? He's also told us in chapter 3 that Jesus is the son of Adam, the son of God, right? He hasn't done a whole lot, but over the course of the book, it's going to fill in with meaning what that means. And what it means is that Jesus is, in fact, God.

19:00 He's the incarnate second person of the eternal trinity. That's the meaning that's going to be filled out. So, when God says from heaven, you are my beloved son, it's God the Father's announcement that this is his dearly loved son. The one who, the Apostle John is going to put it later on, is God's one and only begotten son. The one who was with God and who, in fact, was God at the very beginning. That's the first thing that the voice tells us. You are my beloved son. Second, that same phrase, and this would have been more on the front of the minds of everybody there.

19:34 The same phrase is used by God to declare, again, that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the King of Israel. Now, where does that come from? Well, it's because sonship in the sort of royal lore of Israel had to do with kingship. So the king was understood to have a throne title of being the son of God. Now, why is that? Well, it's because when God took the nation of Israel out of Egypt, when he rescued them from slavery there, what he said to Pharaoh is, how dare you keep my firstborn son under your foot?

20:11 Israel is not just my people, they are my firstborn son, and how dare you keep them in slavery. And so he rescues them from slavery. So the nation of Israel took that for themselves. God called us his firstborn son. We, Israel, are the son of God. And eventually, once the king came along and stood as the representative of the whole nation in himself, he took on the throne title of being son of God. So you get psalms, for example, like Psalm 2. Kiss the son, lest he be angry at you. Right?

20:41 And it's talking first about David or whoever the king is. But it's pressing forward to this greater king that's coming later who's going to sit on the throne forever. Who is the son of God. Not just king, but ontologically the son of God. It's a huge title. And when God says this from heaven, that's what he means. Jesus is given that throne name. He steps into the office of king and therefore representative of the people. What about that last phrase? This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Now, that seems like a pretty plain statement.

21:15 Some of you may even have looked in the eyes of your own son and said something like that. You are my son, and with you I am well pleased. Well, when you say that to your son, you are not doing the same thing that God was doing to Jesus. You're not anointing that kid as the king of Israel and the, you know, savior of the world. You're not doing that. That is what God was doing with Jesus here, though. It's not a plain statement. It points to something else. You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, points to another office that Jesus was stepping into.

21:46 Because they're a quote from Isaiah 42, 1, where God says, Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my beloved one, in whom my soul is well pleased. And Isaiah 42, 1 there is talking about this figure in Isaiah of the suffering servant. The servant of God who dies for his people's sins so that they do not have to die. I mean, you remember that, right? By his stripes, by the servant's stripes, we, the people of God, are healed.

22:19 And the chastisement that was upon him has brought us peace. So you see what's happening here with this voice from heaven, with the baptism. With his baptism and these words from heaven, Jesus is stepping fully into the roles. He's stepping into the offices that God intended him to fill from the very beginning. So you might even say he's triply crowned at this moment. Three crowns go on his head. You've got the crown of heaven as God's son. You've got the crown of Israel as the long-awaited Messiah.

22:52 And then you've got the crown of thorns as the suffering servant who's going to save his people by suffering for them in their place. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not espousing some kind of adoptionism here. It's not that he became those things, any of them, at the moment of his baptism. He's always been those things. He was the son of God for all eternity. He's the second person of the Trinity. He was king and suffering servant since his incarnation. But like, you know, King Charles did a few months after he became king of England, really and truly.

23:23 They had a coronation, a sort of public announcement that this is the case. And his baptism is that kind of thing. It's a public coronation. It's the moment when everybody, the whole crowd, saw him fully take on the power and responsibility of those offices. But here's where we kind of come full circle and why Jesus was baptized right as this was happening. He takes on these powers and responsibilities and offices for his people. He takes them on, on their behalf and for their good.

23:57 And you think about it, the whole point of kingship and Israel had always been for the king to fight the people's battles by God's power. This is the whole point. A king was to fight the people's battles by God's power. That's why it was so shameful for Saul, this great, tall, handsome king, to refuse to fight Goliath. That's why it was so shameful for him to do that. and why it was such a huge moment that actually wound up with David being anointed as king.

24:29 When David said, you know what, I'll do it. I know that there's a God in Israel and so will you when I'm done with this guy. And that was also the point of the suffering servant. When he suffers in Isaiah, he does so not because of his own sin, not for his own good, but for the good of his people. By his stripes, we are healed. By his chastisement, we have peace. You see this? Do you see this? He does these things. He takes on these offices for the good of his people so he can stand in their place.

25:03 And that is exactly why it was so right and fitting for Jesus to be baptized with a bunch of sinners. It's because he was stepping into their shoes. He was uniting himself to their cause, putting his arm around their shoulders and saying, we're in this together. I'm in this with you. He was taken on the office of being their representative, their king, even their champion. Friends, that is incredibly good news for you and me. Because you and I need somebody to fight for us.

25:34 We need somebody to stand in our place because Goliath will kick our tails. Satan will and has defeated you. And unless you have somebody to stand in your place, you are hopeless. We are hopeless, and we've proven it a thousand times. Adam in the Garden of Eden dropped the sword. Noah dropped the sword. David died in sin with his family, a total wreck around him because of his sins. Again and again and again and again.

26:05 Every single time Satan has come, he's fired about three arrows. And we all fall like animals. Think about it. Have we done any better? I mean, 21st century America, right? We're about to send somebody to Mars or something, right? We have some amazing stuff in this country. We have nice houses and we have cars. I heard somebody say that whoever has the cheapest, ugliest car in this entire congregation is driving around in a way that would make a king of the ancient world weep.

26:43 We have phones here in America. But this is not a utopia. This is not a utopia. Our sin wrecks everything that we touch. We've taken something like a phone, which could have been this incredible instrument for sharing the glory of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. And we've turned it into an instrument of evil. we've taken something that looked on the surface like it was supposed to connect us to other people and help us love better and it's just stuck us in a box where for most people in the United States of America to come into a place like this and actually interact with human beings would be something that happens once every two or three years we crush and we kill and we lie and we manipulate and we oppress and we hate and it's not just on the surface Jesus says it all comes from our hearts so there's no

27:50 saving ourselves we're not we're not going to build some kind of government that solves all the problems we're not going to policy our way into utopia we're not going to call a constitutional convention and come up with the method of government that's going to make everything right it's not going to happen because as soon as we build something that looks nice immediately the sin in our hearts is going to want to destroy it. Because that's who we are as human beings. There is no saving ourselves. And so what incredible good news it is when Jesus, the newly crowned king, wakes up to take up our, stands up to take up our fight and to adopt our lost cause and win it for us.

28:29 That's really what the story of the temptation or testing of Jesus is. He receives these offices and then immediately he rises, picks up the sword that Adam dropped and confronts his people's mortal enemy that had destroyed them again and again and again. And so the battle starts out there in the wilderness. And it's going to wage, not just for the rest of the book of Luke, though that's true, but for the rest of history between Jesus, the great king, and Satan, the great accuser. This is where it begins. So point number two, what Jesus wins.

29:02 Luke chapter 4 opens with King Jesus being led out into the wilderness in order to be tempted or tested by the devil. Now Luke doesn't use the language in order to be. He just says he was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted along the way, right? Matthew actually makes it more explicit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness in order to be tempted. So it wasn't incidental. It's not like he went out for a fast and some prayer time and he just happened to get tempted. The spirit knew exactly what he was doing.

29:33 Yep, you're the king now, fully invested with all the power and responsibility of that. Let's go. It's time to fight. Takes him out in order to be tempted. You look at Luke chapter 4, first few verses, everything here is significant. Every detail here is pointing to the fact that Jesus, the king of Israel, is about to be tested in exactly the same way that his people, Israel, were tested. So why the wilderness? I mean, why couldn't this happen in the courts of the temple? Why the wilderness? Because that's where Israel wandered and failed so often in the desert.

30:05 What about the 40 days of fasting and being hungry? Well, it was 40 years that Israel wandered out in that wilderness. So you've got one day of fasting for every year of wandering. Jesus is Israel. He's fighting the same battle that Israel already lost. And then the tempter comes, the devil. The story that starts right there in really chapter 4 verse 2 is one of the most dramatic in the entire life of Jesus.

30:36 And the whole thing, as you read it, just kind of spirals up in intensity. Now, if you've read closely, especially if you read Luke and you went back and read Matthew, you'll know that there are some subtle differences between the way Matthew and Luke tell the story. Most of those don't have any bearing. They're just neither here nor there. The one thing that is kind of important, though, is the order of the temptations. So when Matthew tells the story, he tells the temptations in the order of bread in the desert, jump off the temple, right, and now I'll take you to a high mountain and show you the kingdoms of the world.

31:09 That's the order that they go in. And you can see the whole thing spiraling up in intensity, right? It's like the geography even tracks with the intensity. It starts out on the desert floor and then spirals up to the pinnacle of the temple and then spirals up to a tall mountain somewhere. The whole thing is just moving higher and higher and higher as if the altitude is increasing as the battle increases. Now, for a few reasons, I'm not going to get into it. We actually think that Matthew's account of the order of the temptations is how it happened, right?

31:40 That's the order that it happened. And part of it has to do with the fact that Matthew is insistent that one followed the other, and Luke is not insistent on that at all. He just kind of says this happened, and this happened, and this happened. Not then, then, but and, and. So what we think is probably that Luke rearranges the order in order to make a theological point. Now, does that throw any shade at all on inerrancy or the question of the Bible's accuracy, anything like that? Can you look at that and say, ha, Matthew and Luke have different order of the temptations.

32:11 One's got to be right and one's got to be wrong, and that means the Bible is errant. No, it doesn't mean that at all. Because like I said, Luke doesn't say A, then B, then C. he says A, and also B, and also C. He doesn't put them in an order. And in fact, all four of the gospel writers are perfectly comfortable sort of rearranging events in time because they're not just interested in giving you a chronology. They're making theological points to you.

32:43 And so rearranging the order, as long as they don't insist on one thing following another, is perfectly legitimate in order to press a theological point on you. So what is the point that Luke has in rearranging them? Because the way Luke has it is that you've got the desert, then the mountain, then the pinnacle of the temple. So that's how he does it. So why does he rearrange that? Well, probably he does it. Because for Luke, Jerusalem is the goal of everything. Jerusalem is where the whole story is headed to.

33:15 Again and again, Jesus tells his disciples, I am going to Jerusalem. and Jerusalem is where I'm going to be tortured and crucified. Jerusalem for the whole book is the climax. It's the goal. It's the great and last battle for Jesus. So Luke puts it last here in his recounting of the temptation. And another reason that he might do it is because of that just gigantic nuke in verse 12 where Jesus finally answers Satan. Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

33:47 And Satan flees. Now, what might be going on there? Well, on the surface, we'll talk about it a little more, but Jesus is just saying, I and you, neither of us should put God to the test. But you've got to wonder, the way Luke puts that as the climax, and the way he's already used the same word to say that the devil was testing and tempting Jesus, you've got to wonder if Jesus didn't grab him by the chest and say, you shall not put the Lord your God, me, to the test. Now get out. You've got to wonder. Anyway, I want to look at these temptations sort of in order because I want you to notice particularly how these temptations that Satan throws at Jesus are the exact same ones that he'd used to take out the nation of Israel.

34:35 Exact same ones. I mean, in fact, you got to kind of think about Satan a little bit. You know, Satan's been watching this whole story unfold, God making these promises through the Old Testament, and he's probably gotten a little bit arrogant. Because every time there's a new king, every time the nation of Israel does something new, Satan just takes these, you know, like three little arrows that he's got, and he fires them in there, and the guy falls, right? David falls. Noah falls. Adam falls. They all fall to these three arrows. And so now, when Jesus, the Son of God, the incarnate second person of the Trinity, when he takes on flesh in order to become the next king in that line, Satan's thinking, you know, these things have worked.

35:16 They've worked over and over again. They've worked against individuals. They've worked against entire nations. And so I'm just going to fire these same three babies at this guy, and probably he's going to fall. I mean, after all, this works every time. And now maybe, just maybe, by taking on humanity, God has finally become breakable. And I've never seen these weapons fail yet. So here's what he shoots at him, the first temptation. Turn stones into bread. Look at that stone, Jesus.

35:49 If you're the son of God, and he's not really doubting that. I mean, that's been declared by heaven. It's more like, since you are the son of God, big guy. Turn that stone into bread. Now, think about what a temptation that would have been for Jesus. He's been fasting for 40 days. Luke says there that he's hungry. And it seems like such a reasonable thing to do, right? If you're hungry, just use your messianic powers. Turn some stones into bread, and you'll feel better all of a sudden. But the point of the temptation was whether Jesus would, like Israel before him, demand his own comfort right now.

36:29 Whether he would demand that his belly be filled right now simply because he wanted something. Or whether he would trust the Father to give him things in his own good time. Jesus, you're going to look at the stone and think about how good that bread would be right now? Or are you going to trust that the Father has brought you out here and had you fast for 40 days? You're going to submit to the path of humility and suffering that God has called you to. Well, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8, 3 to him and tells him essentially, look, it's not bread that's most important.

37:04 It is obedience to the Word of God that's most important. And he's thinking back to Deuteronomy 8 where God says to the people of Israel, I've brought you out here in the wilderness so that you can learn to trust me that I will take care of the things that you need. And you get the story of the manna and the quail and water from the rock and all that. So you see what Jesus is saying. What matters is not getting what I want right now. It's not just that which is pleasing to the eye to me right now. What is important is to obey the word of the Lord and trust him to care for me.

37:38 Second temptation. Satan takes him up to a, Matthew says, a high mountain. Luke just says here, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And says to him, I'll give all of this to you. All of this, all their glory, because it's been given to me. Which, I mean, Satan's not lying there. I mean, Jesus several times calls him the ruler of this present age. Paul will call him the prince of the power of the air. I mean, there's a lot of places that say, for now in this age, Satan is the ruler of all this stuff.

38:13 And he does, in fact, have the right to give it to whoever he wants to under the sovereignty of God. Of course, nothing's ever out from under the sovereignty of God. But under that, Satan's got some authority. And so he says, Jesus, I have the right to give you all these kingdoms. I know that's where you're headed for. Already, you know that too, that after all the suffering, after the crucifixion, after all of it, we both know you're going to be exalted as the king of kings and lord of lords. But let me tell you what we can do. We can skip all that stuff. And I'll just give it to you right now.

38:46 All you got to do, Jesus, I mean, the word worship there, it's not like a giant lifetime sort of word. It just means, it just really means touch your knee. That's what it means, to lie prostrate before somebody and recognize them as your better, as someone who's more worthy of worship than you. That's what the word worship means. And so, Jesus, if you'll just do it, if you'll just do it for a second, just touch your knee to the ground. You can skip it all, and I'll give it all to you. You'll walk down this mountain, and all the flags of the world will be waving in your honor. Every gate of every city will be open to you as you walk in as king.

39:20 I will do that for you. Skip the suffering. Take shortcuts. Make ungodly alliances to secure happiness. Israel did that all the time, right? With Egypt, with Assyria, with Babylon. They made alliances to secure their happiness, to secure their glory, rather than trusting in God. Jesus comes back at him.

39:55 It's written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only. shall you serve happiness and glory and peace and all the rest of it at no cost is not worth it if you have to break your loyalty and allegiance to god and friends that's that's true for you too right the world offers you shortcuts all the time to happiness and glory just put this little flag on your desk for the next month and you'll get that promotion you can either use these false pronouns of this student or you can be fired you're going to be presented all the time all the time with the glories of this world and a promise that it's all yours if just for a moment you'll bow the knee you shall worship the lord your god and him only shall you serve

40:55 here's the third one takes him to the pinnacle of the temple says if you're the son of God in other words since you are jump off because if you're the son of God and we both know that you are then God will catch you he can't have his Messiah just falling off the roof of the temple and dying prematurely he'll catch you Jesus and again it makes sense and we do this kind of thing all the time God, you say that you love us.

41:25 Now let's see it. Prove it. Israel did this in the desert at a place called Massah. Demanded that God give them water. God, you say you love us. You brought us out of Egypt. But now you've brought us out into this desert to die because you won't give any water to us. They demanded that God do what they wanted him to do. We do it too, don't we? God, if you really, really love me, you'll give me this job. God, you say you care for me. Well, let's see it. Give me a husband.

41:58 We even try to force God's hand. We try sometimes to put ourselves in a position where he's forced to intervene. Have you ever noticed how so many of our little pop phrases about what it means to have faith in God, they could literally have come out of the mouth of the devil right here on the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus, step out in faith. Jesus, let go and let God do something dumb because you know God loves you and he'll catch you.

42:39 We do that with our sins. We do that with our relationships. We do that with the details of our lives. I remember years and years ago, there was a certain fella, none of you know him, but he got a hold of a book called Radical, and he decided that what God was wanting him to do after reading that book was step out in faith, let go and let God quit his job, just on a whim, and then see what God was going to do with him in a radical way. Didn't work out for him. Because that's exactly the kind of thing that Satan is tempting Jesus to do here.

43:14 Put God in a position where he has to act to prove himself to you. I mean, you see it, right? He's tempting Jesus to doubt God's care for him, to demand proof of that care instead of just taking God at his word. Even more, he's tempting him to exalt himself above God by trying to force God's hand. So Jesus quotes to him in Deuteronomy 6. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Trust him, take him at his word, and he'll care for you.

43:48 But don't try to demand proof. So looking at those, do you see what Jesus is doing here? He's picking up a fight for righteousness and obedience to God that the nation of Israel, of whom he is the king, lost long ago. I mean, these three temptations that Satan throws here to demand that we get what we want right now, to bow down to somebody else in order to shortcut to happiness, and to not trust God to care for us, those were the famous failings of the people of Israel. They're winners for Satan, and so he throws them at Israel's king.

44:21 Each one, each one of these temptations, so slickly reasonable, so promising of quick satisfaction, Israel fell again and again and again to all of them. Jesus does not. But there's another layer to it, too, and it has to do with Luke insisting on taking Jesus' genealogy, Not just back to Abraham and David, but all the way back to Adam. Because he's standing not just as representative of Israel, but as representative of humanity. Because these are the same three temptations that take all of us down.

44:53 We demand instant gratification for God. We demand proof of his love. And we bow down to all kinds of godly stuff in order to get what we want. I mean, you think about Adam and Eve in the garden. These three things were exactly the temptations that took Adam and Eve out. I mean, think about it. We read the story earlier, but think about what that story said. Turn the stones into bread, Jesus. Turn the stones into bread. You're hungry.

45:24 Gratify yourself right now. Look at that fruit, Adam. It's pleasing to the eye and good for food. Eat it now. does does god really keep his promises jesus did he really say that he wouldn't let you fall off this temple and strike your foot against the stone did he really promise that well i say his word is not true so why don't you make him prove it jump off the temple and let's see if god will keep his word adam did god really say that you'll die was that his promise well i say you won't.

46:08 So why don't you take the fruit and let's make him prove it. Bow down and worship me, Jesus. And I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. Obey me, Adam. Worship me and I'll make you like God. See the point? Jesus' battle that day was not just a personal one.

46:39 Yes, he was experiencing temptation in order to be able to sympathize with his people. That's true. It's what Hebrews 4 says. But he was also doing something that his people were never able to do. It's not just for sympathy. He was resisting temptation all the way to the end of its strength, exhausting it, defeating it, something you have never done. And in the process, as he fought this battle on his people's behalf against their mortal enemy, He was doing what we should have done right from the very start. He was honoring, obeying, and worshiping God in our place as our king and representative and champion.

47:15 Look, here's the bottom line in all this. If you are not a Christian, you need a champion like this desperately. You need someone. You need Jesus, in fact, is the only one that meets all the qualifications and has actually done the thing. You need Jesus to take up a fight that you lost a long time ago. Because what Jesus requires, what God requires of you, is more than just turning over a new moral leaf, stopping doing some things and starting doing other things. It's more than just deciding that you want to be righteous all of a sudden and knuckling down and trying really, really hard to produce some good works.

47:52 It's way more than just deciding that, oh, you know what, I have a family now and I want to raise my family in a religious community. No, what God requires of you is a life of perfection, of obeying him with perfection and perfect worship. And friends, that's not just because he's hard-nosed. It's not like God could have just picked a lower standard and said, well, okay, you know, I don't have to demand 100% perfection. Let's just go with 85. It's not like he could have done that.

48:23 Why? Why? Because anything less than perfect obedience to God is treating God as less valuable than he really is, less worthy of honor and worship than he really is. And friend, if you can't give him what he deserves, if you can't give him the perfect obedience and worship that he deserves, your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, worshiping him for who he is, then the ax is already laid at the root your tree. And the only thing that's to be expected is judgment. That's bad news. But the good news is that there is someone who has taken up the cause that you lost, who's picked up the sword that you dropped a long time ago and has won that challenge. There's a champion who's lived the perfect life that God demanded from you, who fought every temptation to the end of its strength and embraced the path of the suffering servant so that he could die in your place to exhaust the curse that you deserved. So what's required of you now? I think so many people when they look at Christianity

49:28 and they come to this question, okay, great. So Jesus is a great guy. What does God want from me now? And they come up with this crazy answer. Well, after all that, what God wants from me is to win that fight for myself. And maybe Jesus is a good cheerleader in the corner. Maybe he's even like, you know, using his eyes to shoot some power into me to be able to fight harder. But basically I got to win my own fight. Got to show charity. Got to go to mass. Got to say rosaries.

49:58 Got to do this. Got to do that. Got to prove that I can do it. Got to stumble to my weary feet and try to pick up this sword again and pointed at Satan. No. That's not what God requires. What's required of you, what God requires of you is to admit that you've lost the fight and that you can't win it and that you need his son to win it for you, to be your champion, your king, your savior.

50:35 That's what it means to have faith. And what if you're already a Christian? Well, if you are, then I hope seeing Jesus in this way, as the one who fights for you, as your champion, your substitute, I hope it rekindles your love for him. I hope you look at him in a new light and realize this Jesus doesn't just love me. He doesn't just like embrace me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. He picks up a sword and goes and fights an enemy that would kill me. I hope it rekindles your love for him, renews your strength in the fight against sin and for righteousness.

51:07 Let me just give you three thoughts, three things that I think this understanding will tend to give you if you meditate on it. Number one, I think it will give you rest. I think it will give you rest. So, yeah, it's true. We go on fighting sin. We're going to go on fighting sin until we stand before Jesus at the end. But in the ultimate sense, friends, the mortal battle is over. Jesus took up your fight, and he won it already. Hebrews tells us that our champion not only finished the fight, but sat down on the throne.

51:38 It's over. So when we fight, and we must, we fight in the full expectation and the full knowledge that the victory is already won. And what that does is that it allows us to fight without losing heart and without losing confidence. Even as we fight, we fight in the sure knowledge that Jesus has already won our fight. Second, it causes us to rejoice. I mean, isn't it just amazing to know that Satan, our mortal enemy, has been defeated?

52:12 I mean, it's not that Satan is afraid of us. I'm well aware that Satan could take me down in an instant. But I also know that he is terrified of my champion who kicked his teeth in. If he wants to take me down, if Satan wants to take me down, praise God, he's going to have to go through Jesus, my king, to do it. And Jesus is the one who said, nobody, nobody will ever snatch these out of my hand.

52:49 It's a non-starter. Third and last, seeing Jesus like this gives us power for the fight. Let me think about it. The dominoes of this whole thing just fall backward through this whole section of Luke. Because Jesus has saved us by fighting the battle that we could not fight for ourselves. Because of that, we now, because we've been saved from our sins and are part of his kingdom, we now have this baptism of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us that we talked about two weeks ago. And because of the Spirit living in us, we can now, as John the Baptist says, bear fruit that comes from abundance.

53:27 Not as a kind of grueling slog to gather up as much fruit as possible to show the judge at the end of time, look at all of this, is it enough? But enjoy gathering up fruit from the harvest. Enjoy looking forward to the day when our king comes back and doing it all, doing everything we do. Under the flag of our champion who has won everything for us. Let's pray.

54:02 Our Lord Jesus, we thank you and honor you today as our great king. As our representative and substitute and champion. The one who fought our battle. The one who lived the life that we ought to have lived. The one who died the death that we deserve. The one who exhausted the wrath of God that was deserved by us. Lord, you did all of that for us. And because of it, if we've repented of our sins and put our faith in you, we have the hope of eternity shining in our eyes. Oh Lord, help us to think about these things, to press them deeply into our hearts, and help us to honor you and love you more because of it.

54:34 We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.