“And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the Wilderness.” Today is Pentecost. The day we celebrate the outpouring of the Spirit! And there is much confusion around the work of Spirit today. And too little dependence on the Spirit today. One pastor wrote, “I am afraid that if we took all the references and teaching about prayer and the Holy spirit our of the scriptures, it would make little or no difference in the way churches function today.” Would it make any difference for us? How much do we depend upon God. Prayer and the Spirit. This is how the Church of God moves forward! This is how the church stands firm. This is how the Church grows.
This is how the head of the church our Lord Jesus Christ conquered. In full dependance and reliance on the Spirit. It’s so easy to read over these words. Filled with the Spirit – it was going in dependance on the Father – who had sent his Spirit to indwell the Son. He was baptized by the Spirit.
It was by the Spirit's power that He performed signs and wonders, it was by the Spirit’s power that He cast out demons, and it was by the power of the Spirit that He proclaimed the gospel (). Just as He was directed not by His own agenda, but by His Father's, so He was driven not by His own power, but by the Spirit's. Jesus was sent to earth by the Father with a mission to fulfill. When the time for the mission arrived, God gave Him the Spirit to empower Him to fulfill the mission.
Jesus is led by the Spirit to confront Satan not in the garden but the wilderness. This is a lesson for us! . The Spirit that rested on him, and led him is the Spirit that leads us beloved! Man in the beginning tried to stand in his own strength and failed.
And the temptations that fall upon man, fell upon him! 1 John 2:16 says, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the father but is from the world.” These are the points on which the first and second Adam were tempted. And we can see parallels. The three temptations are about the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, and the lust of the eyes.
If Jesus is going to reverse the curse he will have to succeed where Adam fell. But the environment is completely different. Adam and Eve faced temptation in a Garden with food supplied for them. Jesus in the desert where he was Hungry. Adam and Eve were together, content and satisfied. Jesus was alone, hungry. Would he obey? Would he do what Adam and Eve did not do? And more importantly would he pass where Israel failed!
The Spirit leads Jesus as the Fathers beloved Son!
We see this in
-
Total dependance
-
Total worship
-
Total trust
Total dependance
The wilderness was the place of Israels testing for 40 years. And Jesus was there “for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days.” It says he was being tempted. This is a verb that speaks of continually being tempted by devil. It was a barrage of temptation, so that he might not obey the Father, and the devil might drive a wedge between him and the Father. But by Spirit he would hold onto his Father. We have not smallest idea what the power of temptation compared to him, for we so often give in In the moment we loose sight of God. But not Christ. He was hungry – but he would not eat Satan’s food!
“The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
The words of Jesus all come from a very important section in the Spirit given word of Deuteronomy 6-11. And it is interesting that that section starts with one of the most famous passages of the Old Testament, called the Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” This whole section is about not having any other gods.
In the first temptation we read in verse 3, ‘The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” If you are the son of God take care of yourself! I need to look for number one. I am the center of the universe! But he knew if he used his divine power to overcome Satan, then he would not have been like us in everyway yet without sin. He has to withstand temptation as man. he needed to trust divine power to sustain him not use it to save himself.
In Deuteronomy 8:3a we read, “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Manna was God saying – your entire existence is dependent on me. Day by day.
Jesus here resists the temptation of self-sufficient and self-serving materialism, the subject of Deuteronomy 8. Humanity had to depend fully on God to satisfy and not take the forbidden fruit of self-sufficiency. Total dependance means even against all odds, in a desert starving you still see God as a good Father who will supply. No matter what you are led by the spirit and do not lean on your own understanding. As we confess in Lord’s Prayer, he provides for us body and soul. This will happen only when you trust your fathers plan. Jesus did.
Jesus’ life is not about his well-being first of all, but about obedience to Gods word. That is his bread. That is his life. Using divine sonship to eat bread would be an abuse of power and would say that God could not be counted on to come through.
The words of God’s mouth are the bread of Jesus’ life. Every word. Not a few words. Not the words particularly easy to accept. Our Lord Jesus read the inspired scripture in order to live by every pronouncement His Father made. This The spirit that inspired the word write about the Word Jesus!
Jesus knew if he was to feed his people the bread of live, he would need to suffer, he would need to sacrifice himself. This is the irony here. He will not turn stones into bread but gives his own body as bread for the people.
This is the first of the three great temptations of man, the lust of the flesh! God is not dependable. You need to take things into your own hand. Satisfy your own hunger. Take care of number one! Make creation serve you. It is the great sin of self-sufficiency. And the point of the desert was to rid Israel of this notion. They failed, but the true Israelite conquered.
Total Worship
Verse 5, ‘And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdom of the world in a moment of time, The devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. Imagine! The glory and majesty of the Babylonian, and roman, and there is future empires like china, Russia, America, And all of Africa. He sees all the people and kingdoms of the world in one moment of time – throughout time and place. This is what he came for! For every tongue, tribe, nation and language!
And he 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!” Satan loves to twist the truth. In a sense he has authority in the sinful world. Jesus calls him the “prince of this world.” But the authority to give it? No! It had never belonged to Satan in the first place he had taken what was not his! Jesus will only receive it from the Father in the way that the Father has ordained. He already had promised it from of old in passages such as Psalm 2 and Daniel 7.
The devil promises to give them all to Jesus on one condition: 'If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours" (Luke 4:7). Receive it the easy way. Avoid the cross! I can give it to you! This is what you came for, right? The Nations! You can have it without that ugly gruesome, sickening cross. Just bow down. Take the way of least resistance. Take the way of least suffering. Take the way of worldly peace, Jesus. The Spirit will lead you to take up your cross, the devil wants us to throw it away. And get glory without suffering.
BUT Do you notice what he does not show him? The SIN. The ugliness. The hatred. The war.
Yes, it was Jesus goal to have all authority and all nations not as they are, but as they will be, by reconciling them to himself through the cross! He came not to take over Satan’s kingdom, but to conquer it, to break it down, and establish his own kingdom! Church; Listen: the kingdom of God never is won through worldly means. It is won in the way of the cross. It is won through simple obedience. Do not use satanic methods to pursue godly ends.
Deuteronomy 6:10 says And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build,” How did they receive all these kingdoms? All this land. All the cities. It was God! It was only Gods to give, not Satan’s!!
It is in this context that Jesus quotes 6:13: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” (Luke 4:7, quoting Duet 6:13.) He would rather worship the Lord than have the whole world! That is the point. The father is greater than all. Satan thought maybe I can tempt him, but the worth of all nations in nothing in comparison to his Father! He alone is worthy of worship! This is the gospel. Total worship means giving all – total sacrifice. Because Jesus has given all. Jesus knew that this choice that he made would cost him everything! Worship means there are no shortcuts to a live with God. We can hold nothing back.
In the garden we the first Adam treated him as worthless, trading worship of God for self-worship. In the wilderness Jesus treated God as worthy of worship giving up his life so that his name might glorified to the ends of the earth. His choice is our salvation.
One day he will stand on another mountain and then it would be all authority not just on earth but also in heaven, which Satan could not give. O dear ones let us worship him in SPIRIT and in truth, and let us in the light of his sacrifice, present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1) That is total dependance.
Total Trust
“If you are the Son of God, through yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘he will guard his angels concerning you, to guard you, and: On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Satan tempts Jesus at the very pinnacle of Gods House and from that point asks him to prove that he was the son of God.
These temptations seek to drive a wedge between the Father and Son. If you really are the son of God then jump off. Satan is asking him not to trust that his Father loves him, but to prove that his Father loves him! If you ask someone to prove your love for you, do you really totally trust that they love you? NO! You want them to prove it. It is a matter of casting doubt. A son that is constantly asking his father to prove his love is not trusting that love.
You see what he is doing here? Satan is tempting Jesus not to Trust the father but Test the Father! And testing is the opposite of trusting! This temptation would increase greatly on the cross, when they said, “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” Then he had no evidence, but his act of trusting Was the cause of his suffering, and our salvation. Do you see he did it for us, who failed all three of these.
The devil even uses scripture here. Or rather misuse. In case you were wondering, Satan knows the Bible backward and forward. But he uses the words of life to kill you. Yes the Bible can be used to break down, if it is not used as intended. Satan quotes the Scripture from Psalm 91 but if he had only read the context he would have seen this was a psalm not about testing God but Trusting God. Trusting that God would defeat his enemies.
The very next lines in the Psalm is, “You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, you will trample the great lion and the serpent.” It is so ironic that Satan that great lion, and serpent knew that this Psalm was about Jesus! And it was Jesus that would crush him. First by defeating him here, but ultimately at the cross!
verse 7, “Jesus answered him, “It is also written: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. In our self-righteous and pride we test God. We wonder if he really loves us. If it is all real. But remember – Luke wants us to be certain. And for us to be absolutely certain of Gods love he gave his son.
What is faith if it needs testing? It is no longer a sure knowledge and firm confidence. Do you need God to prove himself? Is the cross not enough beloved? Look to the cross and resurrection if you want to know God is for you. Jesus Placed himself under the word of God; we like to place the word under our desires. The Spriti inspired word aught ot interpet our life, and correct itNever once did Jesus need a sign.
And so we conclude with verse 11, “Then the devil left him and angels attended.” The devil has been defeated and leaves the field of battle only to come back at an opportune time.
And Jesus is cared for. Beautiful. The Spirit Led him into the desert, and he was attended by angels. The one who was in him was strong then the one in the World. Dear church on this Pentecost Sunday there is nothing that the spirit of God desires more than the glory of Christ! Look to him – the battle he fought was for you so that you might one day also receive that same Spirit. He will lead you where you do not want to Go. But depend upon his word, let the spirit lead you in worship, and let him give you a settled trust that his way is the best way.
Amen