The First Temptation of Christ

Introduction

Abraham, Moses, Rahab, Joshua, Ruth, Isaiah, John the Baptist; what do these men and women have in common? They are all heroes of the Bible—heroes of the faith. But also men and women led by and/or filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s easy to forget that the Bible tells us that faith is not something that we are born with, but is a gift from God. It is he, by way of the Holy Spirit, who births and sustains faith within us. So if we know of some hero of the faith, then we can be assured, that person is filled with and/or led by the Holy Spirit.

And it seems more often than not, when a person is filled with and led by the Spirit, trouble is just on the horizon. Abraham wandering from place to place as a nomad, facing dangers and famine. Moses had to free and lead ungrateful, rebellious Israelites. Joshua leading the Israelites into multiple battles. Rahab betraying her city and the possibility of dying in war. Ruth living with a grieving, bitter mother-in-law, out in the hot sun gleaning barley so they could survive. Isaiah prophesying to people who would not listen and according to tradition was sawn in two with a wooden saw. John the Baptist was arrested and beheaded. And today, we see Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.

We say we want to be filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit, but when we stop and think of what that might mean, we might be a bit more hesitant than we originally were. As we are studying the text this morning, I want us to notice three facts about this episode in Jesus’s life, but then also notice two truths about the temptation that he went through. We’ll deal with the three facts: When, where, and why this happened. But we’ll also deal more closely with How the devil’s temptation was presented and How Jesus dealt with it. And my hope is that at the end of this sermon, we can take these facts and truths and leave here understanding that the slave is no greater than his Master. The student is no better than his teacher. The disciple no better than his Leader.

When, Where, and Why Did this Happen?

How Did the Devil Present His Temptation?

How Did Jesus Respond?

Luke 4:1–4 ESV

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.’ ”

When, Where, and Why Did this Happen?

The first fact that I want us to notice in this text is when this episode happened. There are two answers that we need to give. The first is seen directly in the text itself. The second is there, but we need to put a little bit more thought into it.

First, we see that this happened right after Jesus’s baptism and right after the Father’s voice boomed from heaven: “This is my beloved Son in you I am well pleased.” No mistaking where that voice came from and who it was that was speaking. Those who were there to witness it, heard God say to Jesus that he was his Son and that he was pleased with him. Now, the Son of God, full of the Spirit, goes into the wilderness. And the devil continuously harasses him with the phrase, “If you are the Son of God. . .”

Second, though takes a bit more thought because it really deals with the text not what’s in the text. Notice that Luke divides these two episodes in Jesus’s life—the baptism and the temptation—with Jesus’s genealogy. And at the end of this genealogy, Adam, the son of God. Soon after Adam’s cultural mandate is given—be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and take dominion—he failed and fell and brought all creation with him. Here is Jesus the eternal Son of God given his ministry—to redeem all creation—and about to start to actively do so, but first must do what Adam failed to do: withstand the father of lies and greatest tempter of all time.

Beloved, Jesus had been baptized not because of his own sins, but to identify with us. We were those needing to be washed clean; not him. Yet the moment he identified with us, he was faced with great temptations. And the moment we identify with him as our Lord and Savior, we ought to expect the same. The Christian life is not the life for the lazy; it’s not for the floundering; it’s not for those who just want to coast. The moment we identify with Christ, we have every fallen angel as an active enemy against us. We have this world which loves darkness and is part of that kingdom against us.

The second fact I want us to notice in this text is where this episode happened. It happened in the wilderness—a desert land. Do you know why these types of places are called deserted lands? It’s not because there are cupcakes and pies everywhere. It’s because no one lives there and no one wants to live there. These are places that make it difficult, if not impossible, to live. If you lived in these kinds of places, you’d have to live off of locusts and wild honey! You’re in constant danger of animals that can live out there for a time—preying on the weak.

Here is Jesus going into the wilderness. NO! Here is Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He’s going away from the crowds. He’s entering into aloneness—but not loneliness.

Church family, when you are in Christ and indwelled with the Holy Spirit, you will have times in the wilderness. He will lead you there himself. And you will be alone. There will be times when you must go through difficulties and hardships and afflictions and temptations alone. The crowds will all be gone. We’ll feel like Elijah who complained that only he had not bowed the knee to Baal in all Israel. We’ll feel like Job sitting in ashes and having friends point and accuse and malign our character. We’ll identify well with John exiled on the Island of Patmos. But we need not feel the loneliness. I know that it’s easier said than done. But we must keep in mind and in heart that he or she who is in Christ is never alone. He is with us always to the end of the age. He will never leave us nor forsake us—our constant companion who leads us and loves us.

The third fact I want us to notice in this text is why this episode happened. It was so that he would be tempted. Again, where the first Adam failed, the last Adam must succeed. This episode in Jesus’s life was not an accident. It was part of God’s providential, sovereign plan. He would not protect his Son against the wiles and schemes of the devil. He would send him in the wilderness to face him head-on. All he had was his Father, the Spirit, and his intimate knowledge of the Word. The Father knew what James so wonderfully would state later on:

James 4:7 ESV

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

The Father knew that. The Son knew that. Do we as his children know that? We’ve heard it, sure! We may have even quoted it. But do we know it? Do we believe it? Is our faith based in who Jesus did, what Jesus did, and the Word of God?

You see God takes us to the wilderness, not to tempt us, but to try us. He puts us in situations where we will be tempted, but he is not the one tempting. He is the one refining our faith through the temptations that come our way. There is a difference, you know. God, in trying us, is doing it to strengthen our faith and make us more like Christ. The devil, God’s instrument, has a different motive altogether. He is tempting us to weaken our faith and make us more like himself. The trying of God and the temptation of the devil usually happen simultaneously. Which is why James wrote:

James 1:2–4 ESV

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

How Did the Devil Present His Temptation?

Which leads us to the first truth I want us to see: how the devil presented his temptation.

Luke 4:1–3 ESV

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.”

There are four tactics that the devil used when presenting this temptation to Jesus.

First,

He Tried to Wear Jesus Down

Jesus had gone into the wilderness, filled with and led by the Spirit, in order to be tempted. He was out there for forty days. Now, we tend to think that Jesus didn’t get tempted until the end, but that’s not what Luke says. Luke says that during this entire wilderness experience, Jesus was being tempted by the devil.

Now the number forty is significant in Scripture. It is typically found to be a time of trial or temptation. It rained for forty days and forty nights. Noah and his family had to trust God’s word that entire time. The Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years. Moses stated in

Deuteronomy 8:2 ESV

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Moses was on Mount Sinai for forty days receiving the law, while the people failed miserably below as they gave up on the law they had just promised to keep. Goliath came up every day challenging the armies of Israel for forty days and no one would face him until David came along. You get the point.

All along these forty days, the devil is attacking Jesus. Which may cause us to think: I thought that if you resisted the devil, he would flee from you, but now I’m saying he just kept coming at Jesus. Both can be and are true. If and when the devil attacks, we resist him with the Scriptures, he flees. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never face him again. He regroups, readies himself, reasserts himself, and comes at us again. Spiritual warfare is not much different than physical warfare. A company may retreat momentarily to reorganize, but that company is still in the war and will attack again.

So the devil here attacks, retreats, attacks again throughout the forty days, so as to wear Jesus down.

Have you ever felt that way about the devil’s attacks. They are relentless. He hits one way and then another and still another. Like Job who hears he’s lost much of his fortune from bandits. Before he can have a chance to deal with that, he finds out that he lost the rest of his fortune from fire. But before he could process that, he finds that he lost his children to a great wind. Have you ever felt that the devil was just coming at you with the gloves off? Bare-knuckle, no holds barred, hand to hand combat. And he’s got the advantage because he’s invisible!

It’s a tactic that he uses constantly. But another one is that

He Waited Until Jesus was Weak

Jesus hadn’t eaten for forty days! That’s about as long as doctors say we can go without doing harm to the body. He had nothing to eat, Luke says, in case we were thinking that his fasting was one of those intermittent fastings. Jesus ate nothing. He was not only hungry, he was weak. The body grows tired and weak without food. I’m not sure if you knew that. The three examples of the temptations that we get here are after Jesus had fasted for forty days. These are the big ones.

If you’ve watched boxing, you’ll see that for a few rounds, the boxers are feeling each other out. They have a few pops to the head, a couple of jabs to the side. You’ll even see them leaning on their opponents from time to time, holding on as if they can’t stand up themselves. This is all strategic. The body shots are done to make the body sore. The leaning is to make the body tired. It not only has to hold up its own weight, it has to hold up the weight of another boxer. This causes the hands to come down from protecting the face so that the arms can protect the body. And then a round comes where suddenly they are swinging away and landing most of their shots to the head and the body. The other boxer can’t keep up. He’s tired and sore and weakened by the last few rounds.

So Satan comes. He has given a few jabs here and there throughout the forty days. But now Jesus is weak with hunger. Now the fight really begins.

Just before being arrested, Jesus told his disciples to pray. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He knew that. We ought to keep that in mind. It has been rightly said that we need to be vigilant always, but especially when we experience HALT because that is when we are weakest. When we are

Hungry

Angry

Lonely

Tired

And if you’re saying to yourself, but I’m always angry or I’m always lonely or I’m always hungry or tired, then you need to start dealing with those issues, because you better believe you will be targeted and will be pummeled because of that. I’m not saying this to condemn you or shame you. I say this as a pastor who loves you. If you are constantly dealing with being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, you are not only setting yourself up for physical problems, you are setting yourself up for spiritual problems as well.

But the devil also had the tactic in that

He Exploited Jesus’s Weakness

Jesus was not only weakened by hunger, hunger was his weakness. In this case, what made Jesus susceptible to temptation also was what he was tempted by. Next week, we’ll see that Jesus was tempted by power, but still weakened by hunger. So temptation isn’t always about what weakens us. In this case though, it was.

The devil tempts Jesus to relieve his hunger. He has the power to do it, so why not do it? It would, after all, satisfy his need. It would satiate his appetite. If the devil could get Jesus to look at the short-term rather than the long-term picture, he has him. What do you need now? How can you alleviate the pain and suffering now?

No one likes to suffer. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I can’t wait to go through affliction today.” But we can wake and say, “If I must go through affliction, it is because greater glory—future glory!—is coming.” The writer of Hebrews said of Moses that he was

Hebrews 11:25–26 ESV

choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

Just a few verses later, he wrote that Jesus endured the cross and despised the shame because of the joy that was set before him. That future joy that would be his. I get it, me telling you not to focus on the pain and suffering and hungers that you feel is like telling someone who has poison ivy not to think about how badly she itches.

The devil knows our itches. He will take every opportunity to exploit them. He will do whatever he can to get you to scratch that itch, to fill whatever it is that we are hungry for. He will entice us, but we must remember

1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Lastly,

He Questioned Jesus’s Identity

There was no question in the devil’s mind who Jesus was. “If you are the Son of God. . .” There was no question in Jesus’s mind who he was. But the temptation was to prove it.

We get this same type of temptation, but perhaps a little different. Some of us are tempted to prove ourselves. The devil questions our legitimacy and we feel compelled to prove to anyone, but mainly ourselves, that we are a child of God. We take stupid risks thinking, “I’m God’s child; he’ll protect me.” Pastor Matt will be preaching on that in a couple of weeks. But others of us get this question and it leads us to despair. We question our identity. We question ourselves and know we cannot prove ourselves to be God’s child. And so we doubt and despair and in those doubts we do dumb things like do exactly what the devil is asking us to do. We find a way to fulfill our hunger.

The problem with both of these identity-questions is the same: neither is trusting in God’s indwelling Spirit to give them their identity. Instead, they are both relying on self to do so. One by focusing on how to validate our identity in our power and one by focusing on how we invalidate our identity. The Spirit who leads us to all truth though will remind us that we can neither validate nor invalidate our identity. Our identity is in Christ by grace through faith.

How Did Jesus Respond?

Which leads us to the last truth of this text. How did Jesus respond to the devil’s tactics? I want us to see three ways Jesus responded to Satan’s temptations.

Jesus Followed the Spirit

The first way Jesus responded happened before the temptations came. He followed the Holy Spirit. Remember, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness which implies that Jesus followed where the Spirit led. He did not question the Spirit’s motives. He did not hesitate as the Spirit directed. He followed as the Spirit led.

Our problem is often that we do not. We think we know better. We don’t want to go in the uninhabitable place. What good is there in doing that? This is why Paul would have to say to us: do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Do not quench the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. If we are hoping to fight temptation, then we must follow the Spirit before the temptation comes. As Jesus told his disciples, he leads us to all truths, which—again!—implies that we are in the midst of lies. He leads us to all truths. So if we are wanting to be able to fight the lies that come our way, then we need to follow the Spirit to the truth before we are assaulted by the lies.

Jesus Sought Intimacy with the Father

The second way Jesus responded happened during the temptations. He sought intimacy with the Father. He fasted. We’re not big on fasting in America. In fact, we are more interested in the opposite: we gorge ourselves—on everything. We eat a lot, watch television a lot, drink a lot, work a lot, etc. Those things are not bad in themselves, but when we gorge ourselves on them, they become a replacement for intimacy with the Father.

Fasting is about intimacy. It’s like baptism. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward change. Fasting is an outward sign of an inward desire. As baptism washes the body clean, so the baptism of the Spirit washed the soul clean. As the fasting causes the body to be hungry, so the soul hungers after God. Fasting is not a scam to get what we want from God; if we fast to show how serious we are about a matter or because we really want God to do something for us, then we’ve shown that that something is what we want, not God. It’s a sign that we are hungry for him. Jesus spent forty days with the Father, showing the real hunger of his soul. No wonder Satan’s tactics wouldn’t work! He was attacking the shadow and not the substance.

So then, of course the question is for us, are we hungry for God? Does our souls pant for God as the deer pants for water? And the answer is yes. Every soul is hungry for God, we just don’t recognize it. As Augustine famously wrote in his autobiography, Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

If we are hoping to fight the temptations that come before, we must first see our need for intimacy with the Father. We must live in intimacy with the Father. Jesus showed it through fasting. It was the outworking of his hunger. He showed it through prayer, even at his baptism. Going back to when Jesus said, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” notice the remedy to the weak flesh; it’s prayer! Do not discount the power of prayer as it brings intimacy with the Father.

Jesus Depended Upon God’s Word

But he also showed it by depending upon God’s Word.

Luke 4:4 ESV

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ”

I find it interesting that Luke doesn’t quote the second part of what Jesus said. I think the reason is because he wants us to focus on the first part. Humanity focuses on filling a physical hunger: food, sex, companionship, etc. But satisfying that need does not bring life. We cannot live simply by trying to fill up physical needs and wants. And Jesus used the Word of God to combat the devil’s temptation coming at him. “Fill that hunger, scratch that itch, and live,” the father of lies says. But the Word of Truth, God’s Word, says, “You can’t live by bread alone.” He doesn’t say it isn’t necessary; he says it will never be enough.

If we are questioning the Spirit, grieving or quenching him, how is it that we can trust and use his sword to combat our temptations?

Ephesians 6:17 ESV

and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,

The word for sword, is not a word for some long-bladed broadsword. It’s a short sword, for up close and personal fighting. It’s a bit bigger than a Bowie knife. But it comes from the Spirit. It has originated from the Spirit. But if we do not trust the Spirit’s lead, then surely we will not trust the Spirit’s Word. But that Word is our only weapon when it comes to temptation. It is our only weapon with which we can resist the devil so that he flees from us.

And let me say, we need to be careful with the Word. Soldiers, gladiators, and such would practice wielding their swords. They didn’t wait until combat to become familiar with their weaponry. It would behoove us to be in constant practice with God’s Word. If we don’t practice in peace, how can we be ready in war?

Conclusion

As we finish this short Scripture, we’ve gleaned quite a bit from it. We’ve seen that Jesus did what Adam (and every son of Adam—including you and me) failed to do. He resisted temptation perfectly. And in doing so, he became our Savior and our Example.

Hebrews 2:18 ESV

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

We’ve been given four ways the devil presents temptation and three ways that Jesus responded and those three ways we are needing to emulate. Let us follow the Spirit, seek intimacy with the Father, and depend upon God’s Word.