Luke 4:1-13--The Temptation of Jesus

Luke 4:1-13
English Standard Version

The Temptation of Jesus
4 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 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. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
    and him only shall you serve.’”

9 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, 10 for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to guard you,’

11 and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

​12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

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We're done with the introduction, we're about to see Jesus enter His public ministry, but before that can happen, we see His baptism (that we mentioned briefly at the end of the passage just before His genealogy), and His temptation in the wilderness.  These two events help prove to us that Jesus is fully God and fully man.  As the author of Hebrews puts it, "15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15, ESV).  If Jesus was never tempted like us, then it would be easy for us to say, "Sure He never sinned, because He was never tempted."  Also, it is not right for us to think that this was the only time that Jesus was tempted--we will see other times that Satan will use the words of Jesus' own friends to tempt Him and there will be the temptation that He faces in the Garden of Gethsemane the night of His arrest when He has to struggle with if He's actually going to go through with the plan.  In fact, this passage indicated this in verse 13 by saying that the devil, "departed from him until a n opportune time."  This was not a one-and-done thing for the devil where he lost and just gave up the fight.  The devil is convinced that somehow he can stage a coupe and take the very throne of God, but to do that, he'd have to disqualify the one whom that throne belongs to (one day the Son will receive the kingdom and the throne from His Father).

Jesus had told John that the purpose of His baptism was "to fulfill all righteousness."  Jesus needed to be identified to the Jews for sure, but it is possible that His temptation is also part of this need to "fulfill all righteousness" because the first thing that the Spirit does after Jesus comes up out of the water is to drive Him into the wilderness (in the same way that the scapegoat whom the sins of the people would be placed on was driven into the wilderness when the lot fell on that goat and was marked for Azazel (most likely another name for the devil).  If you're not familiar with scapegoat, take a look at Leviticus 16, as it is an important part of the Day of Atonement, and we will see that Jesus is the fulfillment of this feast--He is the High Priest, He is the sacrifices for the people, and He is the scapegoat that our sins have been laid on, and not just driven away into the wilderness, but He has taken them away so that they are now as far as the east is from the west.  Jesus doesn't just cover up our sins, He takes them upon Himself, and puts them to death in His own body so that they no longer exist to God.

So, we see Jesus driven into the wilderness and some other images of some Old Testament prophets may come to mind (I'll let you read I Kings 18 and 19 to see what's the same and what's different) and it also reminds me of Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 years after their miraculous redemption from their slavery in Egypt.  In both cases we see that those who were in distress were miraculously taken care of in the middle of their situation and comfort and encouragement was given to them, but we don't see that happen here until the temptation is over.  Jesus was going to have to feel like He was going through this alone in much the same way we feel when we go through temptation.  There is also a very real connection here with how these temptations parallel the same kinds of temptations that Adam and Eve faced in the Garden of Eden and how Jesus was tempted in every way like them without sin, proving that He was the Second (and Last) Adam--see Romans 5.

So, Jesus is driven into the wilderness and after 40 days of fasting, He was hungry.  I think that's probably one of the greatest understatements in the entire Bible.  Jesus had chosen to fast to give up food before starting His public ministry, but that's going to make the temptations all the more real to him as we know from our own experiences that we are more likely to give into temptation when we are feeling a physical need (like hunger), and emotional need (like loneliness), a feeling of being out of control that is usually accompanied by something like fear, anxiety, and/or anger, and when we are exhausted or even a little fatigued in any of these areas.  Jesus is being tried in all these areas to see if He will break down and when He is at what appears to be His lowest, most vulnerable time--a position that the Holy Spirit drove Him to as He was following the Spirit's leading, so He did not get through disobedience, but obedience--that is when the devil decides to attack.  Jesus does not give into the temptation to use His creative powers to satisfy His own lusts and desires.  Jesus knows this is about trusting God to provide everything that He needs, and is not really about Jesus' ability to turn stones into bread.  Jesus is being tempted to say, "It looks like I'm going to have to provide for myself here."  I'm sure you're heard of people trying to do their own thing that seems right to them and then asking God to bless it and taking the attitude that if God didn't want them to do it then He should have stopped them.  Jesus points us all back to the Word of God here to say that He has everything He needs if He has the Word of God because it is even more important than daily food, and that is the thing that will change us from the inside out to make us spiritually alive.

Notice how the devil approaches Jesus and how it is attached to what the Father has just said at the baptism.  The Father said, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased."  Satan immediately questions that truth and says, "If you are the Son of God....." and tries to redefine what it means for Jesus to be the Son.  Satan also questions the goodness of God (if God is well-pleased with His Son, then why is Jesus experiencing trials and not abundant blessings)?  Satan thinks that he can trick Jesus into committing the same kinds of sins that Satan himself made by tempting Jesus to be self-absorbed, to give into his lusts, and to seek glory and power that did not belong to Him (at least not yet---Jesus will be coronated as King of Kings and Lord of Lords one day, but for now He is the crown prince awaiting His coronation, which will coincide with His wedding day, and the Father will give Him all these things that Satan is trying to trick Jesus into taking now by sinning and worshiping someone other than God and by short-circuiting God's plan of salvation for everyone, as Satan's plan would supposedly give Jesus the kingdom without needing the cross.  Yet the promise in itself is a lie because Satan is the father of lies and a liar from the beginning.  There is no way that he would give or share that which he perceived belonged to him to Jesus, and we know that none of it belonged to Satan anyways for Satan to even be authorized to make this kind of deal--it all still belongs to God and Satan has just been given temporary dominion of if for a time.  Jesus was not fooled by any of this and said, "It is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God and serve Him only.'"

Next, and this is the last temptation at this time, the devil tries to convince Jesus that He needs to go to the Temple and take the focus off of God and put it on Himself by making a public spectacle and forcing God to keep the Son from dying if He threw Himself down off the highest point of the Temple.  Apparently, this is what Satan thinks he would do if he were the Son with that kind of guarantee of protection--he would use it to put God to the test to see if God really would do what He said He would do, even in the most ridiculous scenarios of our own making.  Jesus does not question the integrity of God.  There is nothing to put to the test because the Son knows every word the Father said is absolute truth, but there's also something insidious that happens in this temptation in that Satan tries to use a partially quoted passage of Scripture as his justification for why Jesus should be okay with this.  We need to be careful that not everyone that comes to us seeming to be speaking the Word of God to us is actually speaking truth.  Many times they are trying to twist the words that God said to say something much like what the serpent said to Adam and Even when he said, "Did God really say.....?"  That is what is going on here.  Jesus is being asked to put God to the test to see if God was serious about Jesus being His Son, and being well-please with Him, and if these promises made to the Son really applied to Jesus or not.  Jesus knows better and quotes again from the book of Deuteronomy (all of the responses that Jesus has made to Satan are from the book of Deuteronomy, which we just finished studying before coming to Luke's gospel).  Jesus was so in tune with the Book of the Law that He naturally just responded with, "It is written....."

Jesus didn't have to think of a response or the need to add anything to what was said or try to modernize it because it had been said to a different people from a different time thousands of years before hand.  He didn't try to make the argument that because He was the Son of God, the Law didn't apply to Him (though He definitely was not under the Law, but the Law is a reflection of His own identity and it is more that God cannot stop being who He is, so that is why Jesus cannot be a Law-breaker).  Does that mean that these temptations weren't real because there was never a chance that Jesus would actually give into sin?  No, the Scripture is clear that the temptations and the test were very real, and just like the temptations that we face, there is always a way of escape.  We don't have to give into temptation either, especially since we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us and Jesus living in and through us, yet this is not a passage about us and our temptations.  This is a passage that proves to us, if there was any question, that Jesus is exactly who the Father says He is and who John the Baptist said He was, and who He soon will proclaim with His own mouth that He is.  Talk is cheap, but Jesus has been examined while He was most vulnerable, for now, and did not give any ground to Satan.  All Satan could do is admit defeat for now and listen when Jesus finally said, "Away from Me."  Jesus knew that He had passed the test and Satan no longer had any reason to be there and when Jesus spoke, Satan had to obey.

So, if Jesus could have just commanded Satan to leave Him to start with, why didn't He?  Why go through this time of trial and temptation if Jesus was the one with authority the whole time?  Again, it is to fulfill all righteousness (though that's hard to wrap our minds around what that means) as we know that any sacrifice would need to be thoroughly examined and found to be without blemish.  I think that's part of what's going on here as Jesus has already been identified as our Passover Lamb and Satan is not only questioning Jesus' identity as the Son of God, but also His identity as the Lamb of God.  So then, we can have confidence that Jesus was tempted in every way like us, yet without sin so that He could take all of our sins upon Himself both as our scapegoat and our Passover Lamb.