Luke 4:1-11
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 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. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
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, for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The story of the temptation of Jesus is familiar to many of us. We read it just about every year during the season of Lent. Though people are most often familiar with the version from Matthew, this one tells it in a little different order than Matthew does. The second and third temptations are switched in the Gospel of Matthew. So, in Matthew, it goes: bread, temple, kingdom. And in Luke, it goes: bread, kingdom, temple—just a fun fact, in case you were wondering. But today, we’re taking a look at the story from Luke.
I find it interesting that each of these temptations is not random, but they are temptations that actually ask Jesus to take a shortcut. The temptations themselves are not bread or power or being the Messiah on the temple, but shortcuts to those different things. Let’s take a look at the first temptation.
So, the devil goes to Jesus, and he says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” On its own, that doesn’t sound like all that much of a temptation, right? If Jesus has the power to turn a stone into bread—bread isn’t bad. Turning the stone into bread isn’t evil on its own. But what is Jesus doing? What is this temptation?
I think the temptation here is for Jesus to begin using His power to make His life easier. He is stuck in the wilderness. He has been there for 40 days, much like Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. And rather than trusting in God’s power to provide and waiting for His Father, the devil tells Him, “Now, just turn the stones into bread. It’s no big deal. You can do it.” But that would be a kind of compromise in His power, because if you look at the story of Jesus, when Jesus does miracles, does He do them for Himself? Does He walk along and take the loaf of bread and turn it into lots of loaves of bread for His own personal consumption? No, it’s for the 5,000. When He does healing, does He heal Himself? No, He heals the crowds that come to Him.
Jesus always uses His power for the good of others, to rescue, because, as He says, “The Son of Man came to serve and not to be served.” And what Jesus is doing is He is proving faithful to His Father’s will and trusting that God the Father will provide for Him.
I think the contrast with humanity is really interesting. You see, you have Jesus out in the wilderness. There’s nothing good around Him. He has no food. He is just simply there, trusting. And if you look back all the way to the beginning, Adam was just about the opposite. He was in a perfect garden. There was food everywhere. Everything he could possibly want was wonderful and there for him. There was no hunger, no pain, no badness at all. And yet he couldn’t handle it. Adam ate from the forbidden fruit. He wanted more. He wanted to be more. And Jesus, instead, He lives the perfect life.
Jesus triumphs where Adam failed by simply trusting, even in this terrible circumstance when you haven’t eaten for 40 days. He was hungry. So, He refused to use His almighty power to help Himself, to turn the stones into bread. Instead, He says, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” He is faithful for us, because we cannot be.
I think this temptation helps us to see the problem with small compromises, because small compromises are always that first step to big ones. You do one little thing—I mean, it can’t be that bad, right? But then you make a compromise and a compromise, and pretty soon it’s a big deal. And this little temptation of bread—would Jesus have eventually gone around and done the Thanos snap every time the Pharisees bothered Him? He could have, but no, He succeeds for us and lives in His Father’s will in a way that we could not, so that He could save us.
The second temptation is one that’s a little confusing too, because it seems weird to tempt Jesus by giving Him power. Jesus is the almighty, all-powerful Son of God. Isn’t Satan offering Jesus something He has anyway? It’s like, “Look, all of the world,” and you go, “Didn’t He make this? Doesn’t He uphold it and sustain it with His almighty power? Isn’t He the Word made flesh?” But there’s another side to Jesus as well—not just the Son of God from eternity past, but also the human being, the Son of David, who is going to be raised to the throne of God forever.
The promise that God gave Israel to say, “David, you will have a son in this kingdom, a human king,” and He has a human mission to fulfill: to be raised as the King of all creation, to take the throne of His father David, to rule over God’s people forever. And we know that’s where He is now, because after He died on the cross, He ascended into heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand.
The temptation here is to cut the corner of the cross to reach where He is supposed to be. Satan wants Jesus to just skip the cross and go straight to the ruling, sitting at the right hand of the Father, just by the devil’s power. And wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be nice to not have to die on a cross, to skip the whippings and the beatings and the rejection and the crown of thorns and the dying? All that sounds bad to me. That’s what the devil wanted—short-circuit it all, cut the corner, get around all that suffering, rejection, and death, and He would be right where He’s supposed to be.
But Jesus says no. He won’t skip the pain. He won’t skip the suffering. He will follow His Father’s will and drink the Father’s wrath. He would be rejected and die on the cross, be buried in a tomb for you and for me, because the mission wasn’t actually about His glory, was it? It was about you and your salvation. The entire reason He came to this world was so that all God’s people could have eternal life and live forever with Him. Being raised to the right hand of the Father didn’t make any sense unless it went through the cross, so you could have life. He wasn’t here for power or glory or riches or comfort. He was here to save you.
And His temptation reminds us that we don’t chase after glory either. Our Savior didn’t go after the power of the world, and perhaps then we shouldn’t use glory—glory and power and success—as a sign of His presence in our life. It certainly wasn’t a sign of the absence of God’s presence in Jesus’s life. The mission went straight through the cross with pain and hurt and suffering, with the promise that on the other side, there would be resurrection, power, and glory.
And very often, the same is true for us. We look at our lives and we say, “If I follow God, shouldn’t I be a success? Shouldn’t everything be good? What’s all this pain I see?” And if God did that with His Son, why would it not be like that with us? It’s on the other side of death that the resurrection is. It’s on the other side that there is glory, that there is inheritance with Christ, the earth made perfect, and that is what we look to. We follow a Christ who embraced the shame of the cross and the pain of this world for the glory on the other side. We follow a Christ who leads that way for us.
The third temptation is the temptation of being the Messiah. So, the devil takes Him all the way up to the top of the temple. And I want you to imagine what would happen if Jesus did what the devil said. He’s standing on the top of the temple, and He jumps off, and then the angels catch Him, and He floats down slowly. And if they’re real angels, they’d be bright and glorious, right? You’re like, “Wow.” And then the people in the temple—what would they do? They would look up and they’d see Him, and all of a sudden Jesus is coming down with these angels who are bearing Him up, and He lands like a superhero, maybe in a three-point stance too, in the middle of the temple. Maybe that’s just Marvel movies.
What would happen to Jesus’s reputation if He did that in the middle of the temple? Do you think the Pharisees would be able to figure out how to crucify Him after He did that? Do you think the Sadducees would go and say, “Oh, that guy. He’s just a jerk”? No way. “He’s the Messiah, of course not.” It would be this perfect sign to say, “That’s the guy we’ve got to follow. Everyone should get behind Him.” And then what would happen to us again? No cross, no rejection, no path through the tomb, no salvation for you and for me.
The devil wanted Him to cut the corner of the cross and get to being the Messiah without following the Father’s will, to chase the approval of others instead of following the path of the Savior. And that’s the hard thing: to simply stick to the Father’s will so that you and I can be saved, to not chase after approval, to not chase the power and the glory and all of those things, but stick to the mission.
And sometimes it’s tempting for churches to do the same—to get rid of the depths of God’s Word, the call to follow Christ who gives up and suffers, and search for glory and look for power and look good to the rest of the world. But that doesn’t make the world more Christian. It makes the church more like the world.
Jesus said no to this perfect reputation, to being immediately recognized as the Messiah, because He knew He needed to save you, to go through the cross. And we too say no to the glory of the world, because the power of salvation is in the Word, in the promise of Jesus Christ, in turning away from glory and focusing on service and Christ—denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him.
You see, the temptations that the devil gave to Jesus weren’t random or weird. The devil wanted Jesus to cut corners, to avoid the cross, to do the mission without the suffering, death, and the resurrection. And it’s a good thing Jesus didn’t, because without it, none of us would be saved in His name. Amen.
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