Do you remember when you were a child and for the first time you began to understand what the travails of childbirth were like? The first time you recognized kind of how hard childbirth was. I don't remember personally but my brother does. He in a time before the internet and before cable TV he learned a little bit older than probably kids do today and he came home from school and saw my mom and looked at her and said, Mom, I had no idea and he said why do you give me birthday presents? You did all the work and for years after that he actually would give her roses on his birthday and say thank you for doing all the work. It's kind of an interesting day. It's a day when you lost two things. First of all life existed before you. It's obvious as it sounds it's something we have to learn, right? That history did not begin when we got awareness. There was a whole world of things happening before we came onto the planet. Secondly you learned that your arrival was a painful thing for others. It's an interesting thought. I think it's fascinating and I think it's important because we have two similar lessons from today's text. The first thing I want us to see we're going to look at Jesus combating Satan in the wilderness in this massive and huge epic battle really to give it its full weight and we're going to see two things. We're going to say one that life went on before us, that humanity is not the full story of history. We're not even the most important part and there's all these cosmic things that have been going on from all eternity and we're part of a much bigger story and the second thing I want us to say and I really want to hone in on it is the pain, the humiliation, the degradation that Jesus went through to get us. I think the more we understand that, the more we focus in on the poignancy of his sacrifice, the more secure we become in how much he loves us and how invested he is in not letting us go. The thing I want you to see as we look at this text this morning is that Jesus bore a tremendous weight as a human, as a human, as a fully human man, to save us, to be with us forever. He was tempted in all ways like we are and he suffered when he made perfect through suffering, to be with us. Please stand as we read from Luke chapter 3 and chapter 4. Now please stand. Let me give you a little bit of context. Jesus has come onto the scene as an adult. He's been baptized by John the Baptist. The Holy Spirit has been poured upon him and we pick up reading there. Now when all the people were being baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven saying, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. Jesus began his ministry with about 30 years of age, being the son as was supposed of Joseph, the son of Eli, and then goes on for 30 verses about the entire genealogy Jesus all the way back to this point. The son of Inus, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God, 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 and he ate nothing during those days and when they were ended he was hungry. In the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command his stone to become bread and Jesus answered him. It is written, it man shall not eat by bread alone and the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and a moment of time and said to him, to you I will give all this authority and their glory, first been delivered to me and I will give it to whom I will if you then will worship me. It will all be yours and Jesus answered him. It is written, you should worship the Lord your God and him only, Jesus. And Satan 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 it will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone. And Jesus answered him and said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him into an opportune time. This far the reading of God's Word, all men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field and the grass withers and flowers fall, but not God's Word. God's Word has stands forever. You may be seated. Jesus for a tremendous weight is a fully human man to save us. The first thing I want you to see, as Luke wants you to see, is the context of this battle that there was the new Adam versus the old enemy that was being tempted. What do I mean by that? Well, what does Luke do? And remember, the Bible has just written, doesn't have any chapters, doesn't have any gaps, has no subheadings and all that stuff out. Luke goes all the way through, Jesus's genealogy and then bam, straight into the temptation. Why? Why does he do it there? He's clearly trying to draw contrast for us. He wants us to see Jesus as the second Adam, right? How does the genealogy start? God declares this is my son and whom I'm fully pleased all the way through the genealogy. How does the genealogy end? The son of Adam, the son of God. Here it is. Jesus, the son of God, Adam, the son of God, right there next to each other. Jesus facing Satan, Adam faced Satan, Adam faced Satan in the garden. Jesus faces Satan in the wilderness. Adam faced Satan surrounded by every tree filled with good food. Jesus faces Satan starving, having had nothing to eat. Adam faces Satan with his companion there next to him. Jesus faces Satan alone, desolate. With Adam, we have the fall of man and with Jesus, we have the resurrection of man, the raising up of man. Jesus is the new Adam. He is healing what Adam has broken. He is bringing to life what died with him. He is carrying all that weight in the midst of the curse that Adam brought. He is bringing life. Jesus is the new Adam. He's also the new Israel, if you look in the passage, you'll see things that remind you. Jesus didn't just wander off into the wilderness. Why did he go into the wilderness? Because the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness. Does that remind you of anything? Does that remind you of going out of the water being led by the Spirit through the wilderness? Does that remind you of Israel coming up out of the red sea being led by God into the wilderness? Israel wandered around the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus wandered in the wilderness for 40 days. Israel began to fear that they were going to starve and cried out to God. Where's the bread? Jesus goes into the wilderness without bread. Waiting upon him, he's the new Israel, the new people of God being constituted. They rebelled against God. They put God to the test. They refuse to do what God was calling them to do, but Jesus remains obedient. He obeys and he fulfills his calling for us. It's a new Adam against the old enemy. And what do they do? They go to battle. Satan appears to him and begins to tempt him. Now there's a few things I want you to see before we kind of jump into this. Satan was tempting at Jesus through the whole 40 days. It's not that he just kind of came to him at the end. It was constantly there and there's nothing in the text that demands that we interpret this as kind of two people talking to each other. Satan very much was very probably, we don't know, but it was very probably tempting Jesus the exact same way he tempts you, putting feelings into your heart, putting thoughts into your mind, flashing ideas before him. And the first thing that he does is he tempts him with food. And when we see that, what I want you to see is going on here is that is that Jesus is being tempted to fulfill our salvation as a human. You see, honestly, we don't think of Jesus as a man. We really don't. We think of him as Superman, right? Superman, sometimes was Superman? Sometimes was Clark Kent, but even when he was Clark Kent, he was always Superman. And all he had to do was change his clothes, right? That's kind of how we think of Jesus. I mean, he looked like a man, but he was never really anything less than God. He was always God, and so things weren't hard for him. I even put that question out on Facebook this week for fun, because I think it's a fascinating question. How did Jesus learn the Bible so well? I think it's a interesting question. Evidently, he and Bianca actually answered it for me. She said, well, he was a motivated student. It would have been fascinating. It wouldn't have just had the little boy, Jesus, and he's reading the Bible to him, and then he's looking at you going, is that about me? But that's another topic. He did learn the Bible, though, as a man. And he suffered as a man. So what's this temptation? Think about it. It's how odd, isn't it? It's not a sin to turn stones to bread. Satan isn't tempting him to sin. What's he tempting him to do? How do you envision Jesus in this text? If you're not seeing him as gone to skin and bones, eyes bulging, cheeks salved, weak, then you're missing the point. He's at his wit's end. Actually, I looked it up this week. How long can you go without eating? And the answer is about 40 days. If you have plenty of water, you can go about 40 days, and you would be at the very edge of starvation. And Jesus, I'm sure he was hallucinating by this point. He's human. And he's looking at these stones, and they had to look like bread and Satan just kind of comes along and just plays along with what he's seeing. He's like, just go ahead and turn it to bread. You're the Son of God. You know you can. What's the harm? And Jesus understood that the harm was that he had to earn our redemption as a human. A man had to keep God's word. By a man came to the world, by a man would come life. He had to do it as a man. Of course, God can keep God's word. That's not hard, but he had to do it as a man as a human with all of our weakness. And what I want you to understand is being God did not make his experiences a man easier. It made it harder. Have you ever tried to die? Have you ever tried to die in the houseful of food? Have you ever tried to die in the house full of fresh baked cookies? When it's always there, when every second is a decision to not indulge yourself on what would be so easy to take, every second of this 40 days, Jesus could have said enough. He could have. Every second was an active decision on his part to not satisfy his need. Satan comes to him and says, just turn the stone of the bread and Jesus reflects on what Deuteronomy says when Moses is talking to the Israelites about what there was like for them in the wilderness and when they got hungry and they starved and he remembers this verse, he says, you shall remember the whole way that the Lord God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness. That he might humble you. Why did God bring them into the wilderness to humble you, to test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not, and he humbled you and he let you hunger and he fed you with man, which you did not know, nor your fathers know, that he might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. In the midst of starvation, he trusted God. He did not rely on his divinity, but he trusted God as a human. He voluntarily experienced every pain that this life causes us to experience.
I want you to reflect on that or really do. I want you to ask yourself, do you believe that Jesus knows how it feels to be you? Do you believe that Jesus knows what it's like to be lonely, what it's like to wait day after day? He does. He knows your pain. He chose to know your pain so that he could be with you. First temptation was with Jesus, fulfill the role of our Savior as a man or what he would depend on his divinity and the answer was he was fully human. He saved us as a human. Secondly, the second temptation will take the long way or the shortcut, what happens? Satan comes to him and says, look at you, you're hollowing in the dirt. Now, what's going on? Satan knows how this book's going to end. He knows all of the universe has been giving to him. It's under his power. The Apostle Paul says that we are before we're converted, we are slaves to the prince of the power of the air that Satan has all the glory. He has all of the nations, but he knows he's going to be given to Jesus. He knows that's what the prophecies are anyway. So what does he do? He comes up to him and goes, Jesus, we know how this ends. I know it's going to take him for me and give him to you, you know that. But tell you what, I would never make you do it like this. I would never make you struggle. I would never make you suffer. All you have to do is ask me and I'll give it to you. Just ask me, it's mine right now. I can give it to you. Just thank me. God's making you suffer. Y'all ways making you starve. Just ask. We're Satan never whispers out to you. How often is he whispers in your ear? Just do it my way and you won't have to do all this. You're up to your elbows and filthy diapers and no one ever thinks you just walk away. I'll give you freedom. You're sick to death of having the same argument with your spouse day in and day out and Satan comes and whispers, just walk away. I'll give you somebody else. I'll give you freedom. You're sick and tired of waiting night after night, year after year, valentines day after valentines day alone, waiting, looking at everyone else who seems to be so happy with their significant others. And Satan comes you and goes, yeah, enough of this Christian waiting stuff. Just get tender. I'll give it to you. God's so withholding. He's so mean. He's so selfish. Just ask.
Night after night going to bed with back pain or hip pain and Satan just comes to you and holds out the bottle of bourbon and says two drinks and I'll take it away. I don't know what God's deal is. We falter and we fall again and again, but Jesus didn't. He remembered the words that he had learned. He says, he quotes from Deuteronomy, it is the Lord your God that you shall fear. Him you shall serve by his name, you shall swear. You should not go out to the other guys, the guys of the people who are around you, for the Lord your God and your midst of the jealous God. Less the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you and he destroy you from the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Actually, this is the next one. Sorry, I got to head of myself. He he quotes and he says you should worship the Lord above all gods. You know, he don't worship glory or power or ease or love or freedom worship him above all. So Satan gives Jesus another vision. He who knows he may have taken him to the top of the temple and maybe just put him on bone or rock. Jesus was so prone to hallucination by this point. I can't imagine what was going through his head after 40 days of starvation after being by himself. But he puts this image in his mind and he's on the top of the temple and he says and this is an interesting. What's the temptation here? He says throw yourself off. Let's see if the angels really will catch you. Psalm 91 says the angels will catch you. Let's see. Don't you want to know? Don't you want to know for sure? Before you go to that cross, before you go into that black void of death, don't you want to know for sure that he'll catch you? Are you going to trust the Lord or are you going to make him prove it? It's an interesting question, isn't it? And he remembers how Israel sinned. They were out in the wilderness. They were thirsty. They were scared that yet God wasn't going with them. And they made God prove it. Give us something to drink. And Jesus, remember those words in Exodus. Don't do it, Ron. We don't do what Israel did at my mass. I don't put the Lord to the test. Trust you when you can't see him. That was a question for Jesus, wasn't it? Will you trust him in your loneliness, in your pain, in your exhaustion, in your depression, in your darkness, when you have strange, strange your eyes in the darkness and see nothing, will you trust him then? Will you trust him even when he calls you to hurt, even when he calls you, when the pain is unbearable, will you trust him then, gloriously, wonderfully. So greatest is love for us. The answer is yes. The answer was yes, wasn't it? On the cross, he looked into that darkness and he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What's he saying? He's saying, you're not here. I can't see you. I can't feel you. I can't hear you. I'm all by myself in this darkness.
And in that darkness, he committed himself to the Lord. Into your hands, I commit my spirit.
Do you see how much he loves you? Do you see it? He experienced that absolute terrible dereliction of being left all alone, abandoned by all, and yet he trusted the Lord in that. And I want you to see how much he loves you because I know you need this reminder. When the job won't come, when the pain won't leave, when the prodigal son or husband or wife won't return, I want you to remember how much God went through for you. And he's there. He's there in that darkness. That's what the temptations were. Jesus, are you going to save us as a man? Are you going to cheat and rely upon your holiness? Jesus, are you going to go the long way and wait upon God to give you the glory? Are you going to take the shortcut and do it the easy way? Are you going to trust God even when he's making it so hard, so miserable? Are you going to trust him? Are you going to make him prove that he's with you? Just a little test. Jesus passed again and again for us. Now, I think that's the point of the text. That's what I wanted to stress. I've heard a lot of sermons on these texts, and usually they're about how Jesus' fault temptation using God's word, and this is how you should fight it. And it's true, but I just felt like I wanted to really stress what Jesus was going through in this text, but there are things that we need to draw from it. Okay, so I've got three things. Mainly this, mainly this. When you are in the woods and you hear a lion roar, you don't need to remember what you learned in Boy Scouts about how to build a fire. You need to run to safety. You need to run to safety. What do I mean? Well, I mean, you need to run to Jesus, the one who's defeated the lion. There's some lessons here. I want you to draw. First of all, this, if Jesus on the very heels of hearing, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased, go straight into temptation and deprivation, then you need to expect everybody is going to experience temptation and deprivation. There's this kind of idea that's like, if I were good, I wouldn't even be tempted. Jesus was good. He was tempted. There's this very strong belief, right, that if God's on my side, then I won't lack nothing. Jesus was on God's side and he almost starved to death. The universality of deprivation and temptation, I listened to a preacher once. He's a assembly of God pastor in Nashville and he was saying that he'd been offered another job. He'd been offered a job making $500,000 a year if he would leave the ministry and go be a motivational speaker. He said, a woman in the church came up to him after the first service and said, you shouldn't have even been tempted by that. And he looked at and he said, you've never been offered $500,000. Temptation is universal. It doesn't mean you're a bad person that you're tempted. The spirit led Jesus went straight into temptation, went straight into deprivation. Everybody should expect it. I think the second thing we need to see in this text is the importance of spiritual disciplines. Jesus faced Satan after a time of fasting and solitude in the Word. Those are three of the historic spiritual disciplines that we celebrate alone. There's corporate disciplines like communion, like worship and there's individual ones, time alone in the Word, time in prayer, time in fasting, time in solitude. Now, when I was a campus minister, everybody went around with these little bracelets, had four letters on them, W-W-J-D. Remember those? And I remember asking the students about them. I said, what does that mean? It goes, what would Jesus do? I said, why are you wearing that? And they would say, well, when I faced temptation, I just, I'm going to go and do what Jesus would do. That's great advice. The problem with that is basically asking me to do what Jesus would do is like giving me a basketball and saying, if you don't know what to do, just do what LeBron James would do. Just do what he would do. Well, that's not going to work for me. For two reasons. One, I'm not six-ten. I'm not a Goliath. I don't have those, those, those, those speed and that agility, but also LeBron James, please, ask about eight hours a day, at least. I have a practice like he's practiced. You can't expect me to do what LeBron James would do if I'm not going to practice the way LeBron James would practice. Okay, let's, let's make this simple for you. If the eternal Son of God had to spend time in the Word, had to fast, had to experience solitude and prayer, how much more do we need those things? How much more? I know what you're thinking. Ricky, you're really going to tell us we need to have a quiet time every day. We wouldn't hurt your soul a little bit. How much more do we need them? I think this last year has really revealed our weakness to us, hasn't it? We're not good, we're not used to deprivation. We haven't experienced very much of it. Cemptations universal, spiritual disciplines are vital and ultimately run to the one who's tamed the lion. Run to the one who's tamed the lion. When you fail temptation, when you fail the spiritual disciplines, we don't want to say the lion, Satan, Peter talks about Satan and he says this, remember our adversary is a roaring lion going around looking for whom he can consume. Satan is out and he's active and he attacks us. The times when we're on spiritual highs, he didn't come to Jesus at a low point. He came to Jesus right after his baptism. Right after he's been told this is my beloved son, he comes to him right then. This is how it comes to you. Right at those times when you feel the strongest,
those are the times he's the easiest for him to pick us off and those are the times when it's our tendency to think that we're fine. The last thing I think here is that there's only one who's ever faced him and defeated him. There's only one who's absorbed every blow that Satan has ever given and defeated him soundly and we need to run to him. We need to run to him. Please pray with me.
Father, you make it clear because Jesus has been tempted in every way as we are, we should run to him, we should come boldly to the throne of grace and ask for help in times of need.
So, Father, we act with calm. The length and the weariness of the quarantine and the life has really gotten us thin. We find ourselves falling to sin more and more. So, we come to you and we ask for help. Would you keep your promise? Would you give us Jesus? First, in his name we pray. Amen.