Luke 4:1-13
“What to do About the Devil”
By: Kenneth Emerson Sauer
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church,
Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org.
Right before Jesus goes into the desert Jesus was baptized and “heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Jesus is the Son of God, but what does it mean to be the Son of God?
Well, in our Gospel lesson for this morning, we get a glimpse of what it means.
We see what Jesus rejected and what He accepted for His vocation as the Son of God.
Because during His time in the wilderness, Jesus struggled with several personal and political options for His mission.
There are right choices in this life and there are bad ones, but oftentimes the bad choices are so cloaked in what seems to be right…in what makes so much sense to our human nature…that what is truly bad and what is truly good get all mixed up.
It’s so easy to rationalize our behavior, and make it conform to what the world accepts as good…
…when…
…in all reality…
…it is truly bad.
I remember when I had my born again experience.
I wrote something down on a piece of paper and taped it to my wall:
“What used to seem cool doesn’t seem so cool anymore—now that good has become evil and evil has become good.”
In his book: The Screwtape Letters, Author C.S. Lewis gives us a good glimpse at how easy it is for us humans to fall prey to the craftiness of the Devil…
…because a lot of the ideas and temptations that the Devil throws at us…
…well…
…to our untrained, unspiritual ears…
…they can make pretty good sense.
And if we are living without the Holy Spirit of God, if we are unsaved, we are slaves to the Devil, slaves to sin.
We have no other choice but to give in to his ideas and his craftiness…
…because without God’s Spirit we mere humans have absolutely no power over Satan, who, as the Prophet Isaiah tells us in chapter 14 …has fallen from heaven… has been cast down to earth … and will be … brought down to hell, to the depths of the pit.
Let’s look at verse one of our Gospel Lesson for this morning.
Luke tells us that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” as He left the Jordan and entered the desert, “where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.”
Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit as He was being tempted by the Devil, and nowhere does the Scripture tells us that the Spirit ever left Him.
When we are tempted, do we rely on the Holy Spirit Who lives inside of those of us who believe, or do we, instead, try to do battle on our own?
The Devil comes to Jesus as a tempter.
And, to tell you the truth, he offers Jesus three things that look pretty good.
There doesn’t appear to be anything horribly wrong with the things that he offers Jesus.
Bread, wealth, and power.
It’s the American way, come to think of it.
In other words, the Devil isn’t offering Jesus things that look really bad, things we normally associate with the dark side and point to as horrible social ills.
Instead, the Devil is offering Jesus things that look, well, quite good.
In the Bible and in life, the Devil is rarely obvious.
That would be too easy.
Avoid everything that looks patently evil and we’re home free.
But the Devil doesn’t work that way in this passage.
The Devil offers Jesus things that look quite appealing, not things that look obviously bad.
“And no wonder,” declares Paul in 2 Corinthians Chapter 11:14, “for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning Jesus sends the Devil packing. But How?
Let’s look at the temptations and how Jesus answers in order to get a few hints.
First, Jesus encounters the Devil in the strength of forty days of fasting.
And why do I use the word “strength”?
“I have always thought,” writes Mark Buchanan, “that the devil was coming to Jesus at His weakest moment: Jesus gaunt, raw-boned, wild-eyed, ready to scavenge any moldy crust of bread or scrape any meat shreds off a lamb’s bone…But I’m not so sure anymore.
The more I learn from fasting the more I see that Jesus actually stood at His strongest when His belly was empty.
Jesus is in peak condition, a fighter Who has been training hard.
When he steps into the ring, His opponent doesn’t stand a chance.”
So that’s one way that Jesus sends the Devil packing.
He is spiritually strong as a result of the spiritual disciplines as He heads into the encounter with the Devil.
We, too, must stay alert at all times through the spiritual disciplines that God offers us.
Prayer, fasting, worship, Communion, Bible Study, witnessing to our faith are some ways that we keep our focus on the will of God and allow the Holy Spirit to be in control of our decision making.
Because the temptations of the Devil are often very subtle.
“The devil said to him, ‘If you are the son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’”
“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’”
What is Jesus saying here?
Could it be that humankind’s most urgent needs are not physical, and that the meeting of these physical needs was not Jesus’ mission?
Remember, we are seeing what Jesus accepted and rejected for His vocation as the Son of God.
Jesus was hungry, but He was “full of the Holy Spirit.”…
…and Jesus’ consciousness never stopped with Himself.
To be sure, His experience of hunger was causing Him to think of hungry people everywhere.
After all, Jesus had grown up among the poor, and He knew their situation.
He knew how many people there were who didn’t have enough to eat.
He never forgot our nature and needs.
And He would teach us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Jesus knew that nothing else in all the world could get Him a quicker following than to give people what we instinctively want—bread.
And suppose that he had dedicated His power and leadership to producing just that?
Certainly that wouldn’t be an evil thing.
It might actually seem altogether very good.
And it was good, but for Jesus it is not the highest good.
People would follow Jesus for the “loaves and fishes” and in the meantime they might very well become completely unconcerned about the real gift of God—the True Bread from Heaven.
“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life…” Jesus told the crowds in John chapter 6.
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty…Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…”
The people needed bread for their souls rather than bread for their bodies only.
It’s a matter of emphasis.
And Jesus knew where the emphasis must fall.
He would not take the short road to popularity…this was not His vocation.
In His very short time on earth Jesus had to help people hunger for God and be saved for eternity…not temporarily.
See how subtle the temptation is?
How often does the Devil tempt us to do something that ‘seems good’, but is not the supreme good?
Are we afraid to invite people to come to church because we are afraid that we will offend them…or lose our friendship with them…our popularity…is this one of the things that causes us to not share the Gospel with those who have not yet accepted it?
Do we give into the temptation not to offend…when the most important thing is: where will this person spend eternity?
What is our mission? What is our vocation as Christians?
What is the Holy Spirit telling us?
The second temptation was for Jesus to seek His ambition (God’s Kingdom) through compromise.
It is a subtle temptation to think that the ends justify the means.
How often are we tempted to ‘cut corners’ in order to achieve what we want?
Or how often are we tempted to step on the hearts and heads of others…thinking only of power or the American way?
The suggestion which often might seem most sensible might very well be Satanic.
There is a right way and a wrong way to achieve our goals, and Jesus, the Son of God, chose the right way…
…He chose the Cross.
Foiled thus far, the Devil mimicked Jesus’ use of Scripture.
“If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here.
For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
“Jesus answered, ‘It says: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Here Satan was tempting Jesus to misuse Scripture by twisting it to suit other purposes—it was a temptation to be sensational.
Satan was tempting Jesus to choose some other way than God’s way.
God’s way was the way of the Cross and of identifying with humankind in our trials and sufferings…this is the way Jesus chose to go.
All of us are tempted to by-pass God, to choose another way.
The way of the Cross is difficult and hard, yet it is the only way to God!
There is a haunting line in this passage of Scripture. It comes in verse 13.
“When the devil had finished all the tempting, he left him until an opportune time.”
This will be an ongoing battle for Jesus.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us in Hebrews chapter 4 that Jesus the Son of God, “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”
Jesus always chose the right way…and you know why He did that?
“For God so loved the world…”
Love chooses the right way over the wrong way…even if the right way is the hard way.
As Christians, we are involved in the Devil’s ongoing battle to undo the work of God, therefore, like Jesus we must be “full of the Holy Spirit” at all times.
One theologian has noted: “Being committed to the way of God in the world does not exempt one from the struggle. In fact, it is those who are most engaged in the way of God who seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil.”
Satan does masquerade as an angel of light.
And it will be most difficult for us to resist his temptations on our own.
Jesus answers the Devil’s very enticing temptations by quoting Scripture.
He doesn’t use magic, and He doesn’t rely on His own strong mental resistance.
We, too, need to be so utterly bathed in Scripture that we will…by the power of the Holy Spirit be able to overcome—which will lead to great results through our lives.
It will give us more peace, more power, a greater testimony, and a greater and more effective ministry.
The Holy Spirit will not leave us during our times of temptation.
Therefore, listen to what the Spirit tells you and the Devil will flee!
Let us pray: Help us, O God, who have been called to be Your disciples here at 912 Briarfield Road in Newport News, Virginia. Change our natures…so that instead of trusting in the world when we are faced with choices…we decide instead, to trust in You. In Christ’s name and for His sake we pray. Amen.
