Sermon Tone Analysis
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Welcome
Good morning everyone and welcome to church, if you’re listening online, welcome!
This last week we officially began the church season of Lent with Ash Wednesday.
Last week we talked about how it is possible for us to misuse these season of the church by doing things in order to appear righteous to others.
If we are going to participate in fasting and spiritual disciplines throughout Lent it is good for us to do so with the right heart.
We are doing it to grow closer to God, not so that we can brag to our family and friends about what we are supposedly doing “For the Lord.”
This morning, we are going to look at Luke 4, this is the passage that helped form Lent into the 40 day period that it is.
This is where we see Jesus go off into the wilderness for 40 days and is tempted by Satan.
Let’s read the passage together then pray together.
Prayer
Engage / Tension
One of the largest freshwater turtles is the alligator snapping turtle.
Found primarily in the southeastern United States, these massive turtles have been known to weigh close to 250 pounds.
They are carnivorous, and while their diet is primarily fish, they have been known to eat almost anything else they can find in the water—even in a few cases small alligators!
The alligator snapping turtle relies on a deceitful method of eating fish.
The turtle will lie completely still on the floor of a lake or river with its mouth wide open.
At the end of the turtle’s tongue is a small, pink, worm-shaped part of their tongue.
The turtle wiggles the end of its tongue so that it looks like a worm moving through the water.
When a fish comes to eat the worm, the turtle’s jaws rapidly close, trapping the fish so that it cannot escape.
The way that the turtle catches the fish is by tempting it.
It waves that worm like bit of it’s tongue out in the open and tries to convince fish that it would be pleasurable to eat, it would be good for them.
This is what temptation is for all of us.
Temptation is often presented to us as something that is desirable, but it always brings about pain and destruction because of it.
If, hypothetically, you could have a conversation with a fish about the snapping turtle, you could show them a video of what ends up happening if they try to eat the “worm” that they think looks so good.
My guess would be that they would no longer want it anymore.
Yet for us, we do often know what will happen if we give in to temptation.
We know it won’t end well, but we still try to convince ourselves otherwise.
In our passage today we will see that Jesus himself was tempted and see how that can affect our lives today.
This is generally about temptations in general.
We could spend the next 20 minutes talking about what tempts us, but instead I want to focus on how Jesus faced his temptation.
And chances are I don’t have to name temptations for you to know what things in life are temptations for you.
You likely already have that thing in mind just hearing the word temptation.
So, let’s look and see how Jesus fights against temptation and how we can apply it in our own life.
Two points that I want us to look at in these opening verses about the temptation of Jesus.
First, it is important that we see the completeness of the incarnation of Jesus.
What I mean, is that when it says Jesus was tempted, it was a very real temptation for him because he was fully man.
Sometimes we might think that Jesus was fully man only in his appearance, but his mind was not prone to human weakness.
We might think, “How could God have a human mind and be God?
Surely that wasn’t the case.”
But that line of thinking is actually more in line with Gnosticism, where they think that Jesus was not a real human and as a result it only looked like he suffered.
Jesus didn’t only seem like a man, he was fully human in every way that we are.
The difference between Jesus and us, is that he was without sin though.
He faces all of the temptations that Satan throws at him as a real man.
This was no cake walk for Jesus, it is important that we remember that.
We need to remember that because we can read about his temptation and think, “Well, this has no bearing on my life because that’s Jesus.
Jesus didn’t actually face temptation, he doesn’t feel the same pull that we feel.”
Hebrews tells us that isn’t the case.
Jesus feels the temptation and suffered as a result of it.
So don’t just brush this passage off and think, well that’s Jesus, it doesn’t really apply to me.
The second thing to take note of is the length of time that Jesus is out in the wilderness.
It’s a parallel with Israel’s 40 years out in the wilderness.
The difference between Israel and Jesus though, is that Israel routinely fails in their wilderness journey.
They are constantly messing up, giving in to temptations, but Jesus does not fail in his wilderness journey.
In fact, Jesus using passages from Deuteronomy that talk about Israel’s tests and failures when he faces his own temptation.
So Jesus is fully man as he faces these temptations and he handles them perfectly unlike the people of Israel.
The First Temptation
This first temptation, while it might appear short, had to be extremely difficult.
Jesus was out in the wilderness for 40 days fasting, going without food.
One of the first things that might pop in your head, “Is that even possible?”
Can someone actually go that long without eating?
The short answer is yes.
While there aren’t a lot of studies done on this (because it is pretty wrong ethically to force someone not to eat just so we can have data, there are people who have done this willingly or because of an emergency.
For example, there was a Canadian couple in 2011 who were driving to a show in Las Vegas when their van got stuck out in a back road.
They had been following the GPS and it sent them down a road they shouldn’t have gone.
After being stuck for three days, the husband, Albert, went to try to get help, while his wife, Rita, stayed in the van.
Days literally turned into weeks, and after 48 days of being stranded, a group of hunters found the van and found Rita alive inside.
There was a spring nearby which gave her water, and she just had a small package of trail mix for food.
The British medical journal has written that people can survive that long without food, but death can occur around 45- 60 days.
Granted this is with pretty good conditions and being able to drink water.
So yes, going that long without food is possible.
Knowing that, think about how great of a temptation this had to be for Jesus.
The devil is pointing out to him that if he really is the son of God, he doesn’t have to suffer the feelings of hunger.
Just tell the rocks to become bread.
But Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3
Jesus is responding in a way that we can’t even imagine doing if we were in that same situation.
Jesus is not trusting in just physical food, he is trusting in God the Father.
Most of us, if we went a day without food we would be rather hangry.
That’s the word for hungry and angry that Amy and I use around the house, I’m sure you know what I mean.
When you are so hungry that it actually affects your mood.
Many of us, if placed in Jesus’ shoes here, would have turned those stones to bread by day 3.
In fact, while our temptations today might not be to turn stones to bread, we do give in to the temptation of going around God’s word to satisfy what we want.
We might know that doing something is wrong, but if it might benefit us, if it would make life easier, we so often give in.
Instead of relying upon God and his word, we rely on ourselves and our own strength.
The Second Temptation
In the second temptation, we see the devil try a different tactic.
Instead of appealing to what Jesus is feeling at the moment, he tries to appeal to what Jesus knows is going to happen.
Here, Satan presents Jesus with a fantasy like world, where the nations, everyone that Jesus was sent to save, would follow him.
All of the nations in the world, Israel, Rome, all of them would open the doors to Jesus’ leadership.
This was possible for Satan to try to tempt Jesus with because he did have power, although limited, over the world.
Jesus calls Satan the prince of this world, Paul calls him the ruler of the kingdom of air and the god of this age.
He really could have given that to Jesus.
But why would he?
Why would Satan want Jesus to take him up on this?
He wanted it because to have the son of God bow down to him was everything he wanted and needed.
No matter what happened after this, Satan would always have the truth that Jesus, the son of God, recognized him as authority over him.
This was a temptation for Jesus because he knew what was coming.
He knew that the path to becoming the savior of the world was going to be include a lot of suffering.
What Satan offers him here is to become a “shortcut Savior.”
Don’t go through the pain of the cross, bow down to me and have the world.
Author Kent Hughes describes what it would be like if Jesus had given in to this temptation.
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