Luke 4:1-13, 2 John 1:7-11
(NASB)
David Bruce Linn,
Pastor-Teacher
13 January 2008
All Rights Reserved
Every person who has begun the journey of faith in Christ hopes and prays for a smooth trip through this life. God has indeed promised to see us through whatever difficulty we may face to the fulfillment of our salvation, as the writer to the Hebrews explained: "Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him [Christ], since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25, NKJV). The word "uttermost" (or "forever" in the NASB) has the idea of "completely." The salvation found in Christ is never a half-way rescue.
But we still have to follow Christ, our Bright Morning Star, through a world ruined by sin. Crucial to our safe arrival in eternity is that we become battle wise to the spiritual war of the ages which rages all around us. The Devil and his army of fallen angels have conspired with lost people to fight against God, Christ, and all who seek to follow him. This is what the magi from the east discovered as they followed the star to Israel to find the promised Deliverer. When they innocently inquired in Jerusalem about the location of the newborn King of the Jews, they did not realize that they had moved directly to the front of the war of the ages, the very spot where the battle raged most heavily. Jerusalem was, in the temporal sense, the center of the kingdom of Herod, who was not pleased to hear of a competitor, and he moved to learn of this King: "Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, 'Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him'" (Matthew 2:7-8).
The magi had to face, as they followed the star to the Christ-child, the attempt of the Enemy of God to hijack their intentions. However limited their knowledge of Messiah may have been, they resolutely intended to worship him, while Herod resolutely intended to murder him. The bad news for those who seek to follow Christ today is that we, too, face the murderous rage of the Evil One. He will attempt to subvert our followership, to pervert our motives, to distract us and turn us aside. If he cannot do those things, he may very well seek to murder us, since that is his nature. We have no choice but to become battle wise about the war between the forces of evil and the forces of God, both human and spirit.
WHEN THE DEVIL COMES TO CALL
As you and I seek to follow the Bright Morning Star, we can be certain that the Devil will come to call with enticing "opportunities" to turn us aside from Christ. The good physician Luke records such an event in the life of Christ from which we can learn much battle wisdom. His account of Christ's temptation in the wilderness begins: "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil" (Luke 4:1-2a).
Why did the Devil come at this particular time? He will always come at an opportune time for attack, and if we can learn something about why he came we may be able to predict his arrival in our own lives. The first thing is that he approached Christ at the inauguration of the Lord's earthly ministry. Earlier in Luke's gospel we read of this event: "Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, 'You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.' When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli..." (Luke 3:21-23).
We should expect the Devil to show up whenever a new work for God is beginning. When a new effort pops up on the Devil's radar screen he is very likely to try to nip it in the bud. How many times have we heard the story of some new ministry--which we imagine to be trouble free--and we find out that the brethren there are in the thick of spiritual battle? We do not need to have read The Art of War by Sun Tzu to see the logic of this battle tactic.
Secondly, we observe that Jesus was tempted by the Devil just after "the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove." When this happens to us for the first time, we suddenly become a power center for God, a threat to Lucifer's plans for self-exaltation. We should expect, even as we are stricken with wonder at the work of God in our lives, to be approached with some great temptation to turn aside from a pure walk with the Lord. Perhaps that is why, historically speaking, great works of the Holy Spirit in revival are often followed by terrible spiritual battles. The Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and the Azusa Street revival, for example, all show this pattern. I don't claim to know the Devil's thoughts, but I imagine that every time he sees people get filled with the Holy Spirit he gets frightened.
A third timing issue for the arrival of a demonic challenge is that Christ had just launched a serious time of seeking God by heading out into the desert for fasting and prayer: "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days..." (Luke 4:1-2). Fasting is a way for humans to say to themselves and to God that nothing is more important than seeking him--even eating! Any special effort of devotion with that level of seriousness is likely to draw the Devil's attention.
A fourth insight about when the Devil tempts us is at the end of verse two: "And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry" (Luke 4:2b). Satan watches for signs of vulnerability, and the moment we are down he comes to call. Not only are we weak at that moment, our weakness affects our judgment and makes it harder to resist the temptations the Devil brings. Do not underestimate how vulnerable you become when you are sick or exhausted.
THE PURPOSE OF THE DEVIL'S TEMPTATIONS
The three specific temptations which the Devil brought to Jesus in the desert reveal a common thread running through them all. Let's look at the account as a whole and then we will return to the specifics: "And the devil said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' And Jesus answered him, 'It is written, "MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE."'And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, 'I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.' Jesus answered him, 'It is written, "YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY."' And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, "HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU TO GUARD YOU," and, "ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE."' And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said, "YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST."' When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time" (Luke 4:3-13).
The common purpose in all three of these temptations was to get Jesus to do something self-willed--anything! The Evil One tried to get Jesus to make a judgment apart from the Father in heaven and then act on it without consulting the Father. Getting us to exert self-will in opposition to the Father is the Devil's greatest purpose in every temptation he directs toward us. This explains so much about our fallen condition! This same Devil came to the first man and the first woman with this central purpose. He invited them to make a judgment apart from God, namely, that the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was selfish and arbitrary on God's part. They accepted his offer even as one third of the holy angels before them had done, and with the same result. The first couple's willingness to make their own evaluation led them to an action which was in obvious contradiction to the command of the loving and holy God with whom they had walked in the cool of the garden.
None of us is immune from the same pathway to rank rebellion. How nice it must have seemed to Adam and Eve as they discussed the foulest violation of the wishes of their Father. In their feeling of superiority and detachment, it all must have seemed very elegant: "Oh, yes, it is wise for us to embrace the personal knowledge of good and evil." The most powerful temptations are elegant in the same way. Enticements to make sinful uses of sex, money, and power have a strong pull on us, but they are obvious and so can be avoided more easily. It is the more refined temptations which sneak by our radar, like cheating on an unfair tax, or generating some human response in the church by twisting Scripture just a little. Sometimes the payoff is so great from an act of self-will that it becomes easy to rationalize.
We must be on the alert at all times. Recently I watched a World War II film about the battle for Bastogne. At one point it focused on a soldier sitting in a frozen foxhole in the snow. Like a hawk he trained his eyes on the enemy line, never averting his gaze, shivering with the cold, because that is the place from where deadly attacks would come. A sergeant came by to check on him and asked: "What are you doing there soldier?" He replied: "I'm watching the line, sir." When attacks from the German army did come men were shot up and blown to bits by artillery shells. The half-frozen soldier knew, as all soldiers do, that watching the line is a matter of life and death.
And so we must watch the line by being alert to the wiles of our Enemy, Lucifer the Fallen, Prince of Darkness, Spinner of Enticing Lies, and Adversary of Our Souls. The Apostle John gave this warning to his beloved children in Christ: "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 1:7-10).
Are you watching the line? Do you have the correct alarms going off in your soul whenever it starts to seem sensible to do something self-willed rather than follow the commandments of your Lord? The moment we fail to watch the line of battle the Enemy will fire upon us, launch artillery, and seek to ram his bayonet through our hearts.
CHRIST OUR PERPETUAL EXAMPLE
If the specific commandments of our heavenly Father are the means to detect temptations sent by the Evil One, then we must know them, follow them, and speak them when we are under attack as we see Christ doing: "And the devil said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' And Jesus answered him, 'It is written, "MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE"' (Luke 4:3-4).
The Devil zeroed in on Christ's need for food to get him to distrust God's sufficiency. Any pretext will do. Perhaps we have been in a relationship and have lost it for whatever reason. The temptation will come to distrust God's provision for our relational needs in the future. This could happen in the area of finances. When we experience a reversal we may have no immediate knowledge of how God will provide for us in the future. We know his promise to care for his children, and we want to follow the Bright Morning Star, but as fear rises in our hearts the Devil has what Scripture calls "an opportune time" to insert a doubt about God's faithfulness. We will find ourselves powerfully tempted to turn from our single-minded followership.
This is the moment when faith must rise up like a flood in our hearts to quench the blaze of fear. Job's faith arose even in the middle of losing everything. With no evidence of God's restoration within human sight, he spoke his faith: "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him..." (Job 13:15). There is power in speaking our faith. The demonic hosts hate it! Any believers within earshot will find themselves mysteriously strengthened. The tide of spiritual battle turns at that moment. This is not an accident of circumstances, but a decision we make to trust God and wield the word of God like a sword.
The second temptation (the order is not important) is related to God's glory and how we respond to it: "And he [the Devil] led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, 'I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.' Jesus answered him, 'It is written, "YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY."' Satan is intimately acquainted with the unbridled lust for the glory which belongs only to God, and so he attacked Jesus in his humanity by offering him the same poison. God is, in fact, the unique, incomparably glorious object of all worship. Focusing all of our worship on him alone is how we glorify his person.
And that focus of worship begins by refusing to accept any glory which belongs only to God. Isaiah spoke this word from the Lord: "I am the LORD, that is My name; /I will not give My glory to another..." (Isaiah 42:8b). This is why we must understand all of life, from balancing our bank statements to joyful singing in church as the proper arena for the expression of worship.
Thirdly, Satan sought to divert Jesus from following the perfect will of his Father: "And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, "HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU TO GUARD YOU," and, "ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE."' And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said, "YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST."' Maybe Satan was hoping that angels would not save Jesus from a leap from the peak of the temple and he would die. Even if not, the act of jumping would be a deadly act of presumption in the spiritual realm. It does not take a degree in theology to know that it is not God's will for us to jump off a building for no reason.
In the battle of Bastogne there were times when the Allied army was forced to hold the line by sitting in their foxholes and allowing the German army to shell them with artillery. In the film I mentioned earlier there was a scene where the Allies were hunkering down as the trees around them were blown apart, with branches and even trunks raining down on them along with shrapnel. Many soldiers felt a powerful impulse to leave their foxholes to save injured buddies, to pull trees off of others' foxholes, or simply to escape the deadly blast. Echoing down the line the call repeated: "Stay in your foxholes! Stay in your foxholes!" It was not easy to overcome the impulse to jump, but those who failed to master their impulse paid for it dearly.
Your Commander has charged you to stay in the will of God, to stay in your times of devotion, and follow only him even when things are exploding all around you. The Devil will say at every opportunity: "Forget what he said! You know better." And the choice to follow that false voice, to divert from following the Bright Morning Star will be the death of you. The will of your Commander, Yahweh of Armies, is that you trust his sufficiency, worship him only, and follow his will unreservedly.
If your desire for a smooth and untroubled life has not yet been hit by artillery fire, it will be. Sometimes you even get blown up by other Christians. Don't jump and run, don't quit doing the things which strengthen your faith. Fill your mind and heart with the word of God every day, and use it like a sword. Pray for power from the Holy Spirit to withstand temptations beyond your human strength. Let the fire his artillery at you, let him entice you with all sorts of opportunities to turn away from the Bright Morning Star, but you stay right where God told you to stay.
And right there, amidst the flying splintered tree trunks, in the personal inner battle to stay on track, the Father will send his angels to help you, as he did for Jesus. When Jesus finished shooting down the lies of the Evil One with the word of God, Matthew records: "Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him" (Matthew 4:11). How can I be certain that God will do this? The ministry of angels is described in Hebrews 1:14: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?" Be sure that you have trusted Christ for eternal salvation, and then the angels become your angels. The spiritual war of the ages is on, and we must all be battle wise.