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See in the Blue Book just the first and last verse, and of course the chorus of 150.
So instead of right, we're running into one there. Why is no getting?
Up on the day long while there are others and slamming about.
Never know whatever glowings are on the wrong.
Oh man, the guy.
Thank you.
And I brightened.
Him will understand.
All I am sorry.
Yeah, my brother.
Look at him in the sunshine.
Will understand.
It all by him and my.
OK, so as we mentioned this morning, we're going to read the first part of Luke Chapter 4.
And uh, we will read the 1St 15 verses and I've asked Nathan Castleberry to read the portion. So Luke chapter 4, the 1St 15 verses.
Chapter 4.
And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being 40 days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing, and when they were ended, he asked to work hunger. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone, that it be made bread.
And Jesus answered him, saying, that it is risen that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I get it. If thou therefore will worship me, all shall be thine.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, and Satan.
Credits written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a tentacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from him. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any any time thou dash thy foot against the stone. And Jesus answering, said unto him, It is said.
That shall not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season, and Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and there went out of fame of him through all the region round about, and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified, evolved.
00:05:05
So as I mentioned this morning, we felt exercise to take this portion up because it does connect us with the story of the wilderness in the Old Testament.
Because here we find the Lord Jesus as a man in the circumstances of life here in this, so to speak, wilderness world. But it is at a special time led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Now there were two things that were necessary to take place before the Lord's public ministry. If we were to back up just a little bit, we would find that we He comes to John the Baptist.
And he is baptized John the Baptist. There were, there was a little remnant, godly remnant in Israel who were coming to John the Baptist for the baptism of repentance, and they were being baptized in the river Jordan. Now the Lord of course had nothing to repent of and the temptation in the wilderness and connection with what we said this morning will show that. But why was the Lord baptized? And he, the reason being he identified?
As a man, as a Jew with the godly remnant in Israel, because remember, baptism always identifies us with someone, just as in the Old Testament when they went through the Red Sea, a figure of baptism, it identified them with Moses. When you and I are baptized in Christianity and identifies us with Christ. And so it it always has to do with identification. And so the Lord Jesus is a godly Jew as a man.
He identified with this little remnant that were confessing their sins and coming to John for the baptism of repentance. But there was something else that needed to take place before his public ministry, and that was what we have in this portion, and that was the temptation in the wilderness. Now in Matthew's Gospel, we have it in some detail. Mark only mentions it very, very briefly, just in a couple of verses, and Luke brings it out perhaps.
In the, uh, in, in, in the best way. I, I, I want, that's not what I really wanna say. But he brings it out and props the fullest way and he brings it out in a moral sense. And we'll talk about that as we go down these verses. But those two things were very necessary. The baptism of the Lord. And the other thing the baptism of the Lord did, it marked him out by the Spirit of God as to who he was, that this was God's anointed, that this was the Christ. The Spirit of God descended upon him in the bodily form of a dove. Now the Spirit of God is gonna lead him into the wilderness to be tempted.
And we'll speak about why that was so necessary.
So you'll notice he was LED of the Spirit and the whole life and work of the Lord Jesus was one in the power of the Spirit. And if you trace his life, it's just give you a little challenge, a little homework. Go through the life of the Lord Jesus and notice the times where it speaks of him being LED of the Spirit or something he does in the power of the Spirit.
From his birth it says that holy thing that shall be born of thee is begotten of the Holy Ghost. And all from that point on, everything he does is in the power of the Spirit, because the PO, the Spirit of God, is the energy in which God always moves. So if I can make it practical, here's the Lord Jesus, lead of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. You and I as we go through this wilderness world, we have the Spirit of God then.
In US and with us to lead us in every aspect of our lives. And if we want power in our pathway through this world, it's to give the Spirit that place so that we can be LED where he le where he wants us to be, where he wants us to go. And everything we do in our Christian life that's going to have ways or impact is going to be in the power of the Spirit of God.
Could you tell us the significance of the 40 days?
Yeah. So for numbers, as you well know, have their significance in Scripture. And 40 is always God's time of complete testing. So the children of Israel were 40 years in the wilderness. It was a time of testing for Israel. And there are a number of times when you have 40 days or 40 years or 40 something in in the word of God. So 40 for the Lord here was 40 days because it was a complete time of testing.
00:10:06
And what's interesting in connection with your question is that in Luke here it indicates that the temptation went on for a full 40 days. So what is what is denoted here are three special temptations at the end of those 40 days. But the devil had come to him, and for 40 days he was tempted. Now again, let's make this very practical. There isn't a day in your life and mine when the devil.
In some way isn't going to put some temptation before your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walks about, seeking whom he may devour. He never gives up. He can't rob you of your salvation.
But he can rob you of your joy in the Lord. He wants to discourage you. He wants to spoil your testimony. He wants you to even deny the Lord if he could get you to do to do it. So the Lord wasn't just tempted in these three ways. These are three special ways, and we'll see why they're given to us in this way. But he was tempted for a full 40 days.
So we might ask ourselves then, why was this so necessary? If the Lord Jesus, as we said this morning, if He knew no sin, if He did no sin, and in Him was no sin as we had those 3 verses this morning, why the temptation in the wilderness? Throw that out of the question. Maybe somebody has a thought.
He said he needed to be tested in every way.
Yes, and not to prove to God or to himself that he was perfect, but to show beyond the shadow of a doubt to mankind who this one was. I'll give you a little illustration that might help us to understand it. I wear a gold ring. And suppose I tell you that this gold ring is 24 karat gold, and you come to me and you say no. Come on, Jim, you're you're sure that's 24 karat gold.
You're really sure that it's 24 karat? And I say, yes, I'm really sure. So I say let's give it a test. So I know nothing about these things. Science wasn't my thing. But we'll say for the sake of the illustration that we bring a, uh, beaker of some kind of acid that we use you use to test gold. I can see Chris smiling. But anyway, let's, let's just, uh, this is all in layman's terms. So we bring the beaker of acid and I drop the ring into it and I say, now we're gonna leave that ring in there for 24 hours.
And see what happens. And after 24 hours we come back and we pull the ring out and you say, OK, I can see you are completely honest about it. It is indeed 24 karat gold. Now, the test didn't make it 24 karat gold. It was 24 karat gold. But the and the test didn't prove it to me because I already knew that. But the test proved to you the reality of what this ring was made out of pure 24, pure 24 karat gold.
And so I believe that helps us to understand why God allowed his beloved Son, the perfect Son of God, to go through this temptation in the wilderness before his public ministry.
Let let let me just sum it up again. In his baptism, the Spirit of God had given confirmation as to who he was. Now God himself gives confirmation through the wilderness, so that as he leaves the wilderness and goes out in his public ministry, there is no question in the minds of those who have faith to know who this the Lord Jesus is. He's the anointed one. He's the one who's come in the power of the Spirit.
He's the Son of God. God the Father finds all his delight in this one, and there is no question as to the veracity of what he ha has said, that he is indeed the Son of God.
Might be worth mentioning that at any point, uh.
At all points in his time on earth, Jesus was still divine.
OK, but in order to.
Occupy a position whereby we can read Hebrews chapter 2 at the end of the last verse and saying he being tempted in all ways is now able to sucker those who are tempted must uh, have necessarily laid by those divine attributes OK to be to experience hunger and all the other temptations that the human race, uh.
00:15:17
Deals with OK if a man did not go through everything that a human being could go through and reach the cross.
Not being fully tested.
Then the punishment is, is not, is not for not to punish the, the, the the sacrifice is not full, right? There needs to be a man who walked on earth, who completed, who walked in perfect harmony according to the spirit in, in communion with the Father and in communion with God, uh, such that the, the his atoning sacrifice could successfully, umm.
Be.
Doesn't work.
So that's very helpful because let me stress again what Austin said, there is nothing that you and I will ever pass through in the path of faith and service that the Lord Jesus as a man hasn't already felt as often said he was in all points tempted leap like as we are. And then of course, Scripture adds without, without sin. So in John chapter 14, I believe it is. I think you can look it up. I think it's verse 30.
He says the Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. So you have this temptation at the beginning. And then when the devil does return, you know, it says the devil departed for a season, but the devil didn't leave him alone. And the devil doesn't leave you and I alone. We might triumph through the power of the Spirit of God and nearness to the Lord in one difficulty or temptation, but the devil is always going to come back with more. But at the end of his pathway, the Lord said, the Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me.
So He was it. It shows that He was the perfect, sinless Son of God. But it's been said he passed through everything. There's nothing that you've passed through will ever pass through in your life that you'll be able to say, no one understands me. Maybe no other human being on earth will understand you. But the Lord Jesus as a man at the right hand of God understands and empathizes because He went through it before.
That thought carried through to the judgment, seat to the judgment. John 522. For the father judges no man, but have committed all judgment unto the Son.
Men are going to have to stand before a judge who has experienced it all. There is going to be no excuse. You don't understand what it was like to be rejected because you were doing the right thing or that you tried to do the right thing or whatever the excuses.
Jesus can say I've I've been through that. I know what it was like.
It's.
It's gonna be a summer. God has has completed the the whole picture from start to finish. Jesus is a man.
Umm, in every sense of the word, at the same time as he is God.
Umm, you've completed, fulfilled the sacrifice, and he's gonna fulfill his place and his judge.
Not as not so much as God. Maybe as a man.
Why don't they do it?
With template Jesus.
I mean, we're asked ask Jesus to worship him. Didn't he know who Jesus was?
Well, it goes right back to why he fell from it was cast out of heaven and the host that followed him there, he sought worship for himself. He exalted himself really at that point. And as a result, he was cast out of heaven. So Satan, Satan hasn't changed a bit. There's no, there's nothing no betterment than Satan and his his host. And so it was the the ages had passed since he'd been cast out of heaven.
00:20:08
Now, he still thought he could somehow, uh, tempt the Lord and get him to, uh, adhere to these three specific temptations that are brought out. It's interesting too, that when man was tempted in the garden, it was in the best of circumstances. And there we find the, the defeat of man. Satan was able through Eve to, uh, bring in sin into the world and the human race and whole creation fell.
Under the effects of the curse. But here we find the victory of the triumph of Christ, the perfect man, and there's nothing in him that that responds. But again, it's interesting, isn't it, Because Satan left him for a time, but then he comes back later to seek again. And I suppose one of the again, one of the practical lessons we learned from this is Satan doesn't give up in any one of us. And just because you've had a victory in your life.
In connection with some tests or trial and.
Temptation of Satan doesn't mean you're home free, so to speak. The enemy is going to come back in one way or another. And I've sometimes said this, that Satan is the greatest dealer in antiques that there is. And what do I mean by that?
He takes the same old lies and the same old deception that he's used in the past, and he may dress them up a little bit different. You know, people who deal in antiques, they get an old piece of furniture and what do they do? They put some new upholstery on it and some new padding. They may be varnish it a little de or paint it a little different color, but underneath it's the same old piece of furniture that is 200 years old.
It may be presented a little bit different, a little different color or so on. And that's what the enemy Satan does. He's had all these thousands of years to work on mankind. He knows mankind through and through, and he knows how to present things in just a little bit different color or shade, uh, according to the course the world's on, according to the spirit of the age or whatever may be the movement of the world, uh, at that time.
So that's why I think one year we took up the armor of God and we noticed that the armor of God is necessary not to stand against the power of the devil, but against the Wiles of the devil. You know the the Knights of old, they put on armor so they could stand against the power of the enemy, but we put on the armor of God to stand against the Wiles or the subtlety of the devil where no match for the devil and he comes in various ways. So again he came in various ways to the Lord Jesus.
And we'll notice these three different ways.
Under the best of circumstances, that everything they could ever want provided for them, and they still were tempted and entailed miserably. Whereas here the Lord is tired and hungry and alone in the wilderness and still able to live.
And it, it shows, doesn't it, that well, yes, I to some degree our environment affects us, but we can't blame our environment on our sin and failure. If I'm tempted of the devil, I can't say, well, you know, it was because I was brought up a certain way and my parents failed a certain way, or I had to go to a certain school or this and that and the other thing, or I got into bad company or we lived in a bad neighborhood.
You hear all those kinds of excuses. Yes, our environment to some degree affects us, but in Christianity we have everything we need to meet the temptations of the devil. I realized we're not like the Lord. The Lord was perfect. Of course he was sinless. But you and I have, as it says in another place, all things that pertain unto life and godliness. If I listen to the devil, fall under the devil's spell, if I'm tempted by the devil and LED away in something in my of my own will, I cannot blame.
Anybody I I cannot blame my environment. I can't blame anybody else. I listen to Satan and I didn't avail myself of the resources that I had, that God has given me. The Spirit of God, the divine life, Christ living for me, the word of God, prayer, on and on goes the list of resources.
00:25:01
Perfect man, God come down, and so he had special.
Power to resist, and it wasn't a temptation to him. But how did he respond as a man?
He showed us how we need to deal with the temptation.
Did you He referred to God's word? That doesn't work. That doesn't sound right, because God said differently.
OK.
Yes and we'll develop that next time a little bit Our time is almost gone, but I I'm gonna give you a little homework before the umm, next session on this tomorrow.
I'll I'll give you a verse and then I'm gonna give you something to think about First John chapter 2 and verse 16. So I want you to really think about this and maybe some of you will have a thought on it by tomorrow afternoon. First John chapter 2.
And verse 16.
For all that is in the world, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. Three things here, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Now we won't develop it now, but when Satan came to act to even the garden, he came with those three things. He hit the when he tempted Eve, there was the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. You can go back to there and see if you can figure it out.
From the scripture in our chapter here, we find the same thing again. Like I say, Satan uses the same tactics over and over again. So in Matthew's Gospel where you have the temptation in the wilderness.
The order in which the temptation is given is different. You can look that up and notice it there. It's chronological, but in Luke it's not. Nothing's ever chronological in Luke, or very rarely at least, because Luke gives us things more in a moral order in in an order to, in a sense to, or in an order to teach us the sense of the doctrines that that the Lord was seeking to bring out or that Luke by the Spirit of God is seeking to bring before.
So in Luke, the temptation is not chronological. It's in the same order that we have in the verse in first John and the in the same order that we have it back in in Genesis. So I'm going to leave that with you. Look it up, think about it, and maybe some of you tomorrow will have a little bit of a thought on it.