Defying the Devil • Luke 4:1-13

1:01:05 Teaching begins

Notes

Proverbs 27:4 says “Wrath is fierce and anger is a flood, but who can stand before jealousy?”

Wrath is singleminded, with no mercy to lessen it. Anger is also singleminded, unrestrained, going beyond a reasonable limit.

Jealousy is even more extreme. It is unstoppable, you cannot refuse it, you cannot resist it, you cannot defy jealousy.

Another way this word is translated is “zeal” Today we’re looking at the extreme, unstoppable, irresistible zeal of God which is in Jesus, the Servant of God. In zeal He will surely defy the devil to accomplish eternal salvation.

Let’s read Luke 4:1-13.

1. Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit, who leads Him into the wilderness.

A. John baptised Jesus to identify with humanity. He is going to fulfil all righteousness, and He is going to pay for all the sins of man against God.

B. The Holy Spirit was given to Jesus to lead Him and enable Him. Jesus is yielded completely to Him as the Lord. Jesus is the Servant of the Lord.

C. The Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

1. Tempt means to entice someone to leave the right way to go a wrong way. You promise someone good if they do what is wrong. It involves lying, deceiving, and misrepresenting reality. The devil wants us to see things his way.

2. The devil attacks with sudden impulses to do this or do that. It’s a sudden spontaneous push to do some usually unpremeditated action. Just do it. Don’t think. Look what you’ll get! The devil wants to be the prime motivator, not God.

3. He attacked Adam and Eve with lies and deception. They ignored God’s word and saw things the devil’s way: this is good for food, desirable to the eyes and good to make you wise. When they sinned against God they lost their lives, they lost what God gave them, the whole world. They lost their relationship with God. We inherited their slavery to sin and disobedience.

4. Jesus has just identified with mankind in order to save them from the domain of darkness and bring them to His kingdom. This is the next step: to let the devil test Jesus and try to deceive Him, and lead Him into disobeying God for personal gain.

D. You can see that this is a conflict, a battle, and it’s life and death. Jesus is sinless and has a perfect relationship with the Father. If He sins against the Father, He blows up Their relationship. He can’t be the sacrifice for anyone’s sins. He Himself will be separated from God and die spiritually. He will be lost forever and so will we. This battle is life and death.

E. Jesus does not eat for forty days. This is the leading of the Holy Spirit. Do not eat. I would assume that means fast and pray. It would be weird if the Holy Spirit would say, “Don’t eat, but don’t pray.” You’re in the wilderness, You’re going to face the devil, You maintain communion with the Father.

2. The devil tempts Jesus to provide for Himself.

A. Jesus became hungry.

1. When you fast you have hunger pangs for a while and it’s uncomfortable. After a time they go away. Fasting clears your thinking, helps you to focus.

2. You can only go about forty days without eating, and then your body says you need to eat right now. Jesus is starving to death.

3. I’ve heard when you get to this point all you can think about is food. The hunger pangs return and they are intense. I don’t know how that was for Jesus because He was sinless and perfect. But He knew He was in physical danger of death.

B. The devil gives Jesus an impulse: feed Yourself.

1. He doesn’t doubt that Jesus is the Son of God. That “if” in this situation means, “If, and it’s true.” You could say, “Since you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

2. The idea is, You have the power, You’re not incapable. You don’t have to sit there starving. You could do that right now. It would be so easy. Don’t think. Just do it. That’s the impulse.

C. Jesus responds with the will of God: “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone.”

1. That’s from Deuteronomy 8:1-6. I’ll read the context: “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to give to your forefathers. You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.”

2. You live life in the presence of the Lord with understanding. You remember that He humbles you to depend upon Him and obey Him. This is God disciplining you as a man disciplines his son. That’s the love of God. Love Him! Walk in His ways and fear Him. Life is more than food and clothing, do you remember Jesus saying that in the Sermon on the Mount? Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Jesus believed that and understood that. He said My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work, John 4:34.

3. Jesus believes that doing God’s will is life. Even if He dies in doing God’s will He will still live with God.

4. But if he eats before God gives the word, then He has stopped seeking first God’s kingdom and walking His ways, He has started seeking His own will and His own ways. He knows that is death. He would save His life physically but die spiritually. That’s not the will of God.

5. Jesus doesn’t so much say “no” to the devil as say, “yes” to God.

D. This is His principle: What happens to Me is not the issue; doing the will of God is more important than My life.

3. The devil tempts Jesus to glorify Himself.

A. We know from Matthew 4:8 it was an exceedingly high mountain. It was an impressive panoramic view, and the devil makes it more impressive: he shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, all in a moment of time. So it’s flashy and distracting and impressive and showy. Glory, big buildings and monuments, pyramids, colossal statues, temples, staggering architecture, armies, some of these kingdoms are millennia old.

B. Before the flash of all this glory fades comes the impulse: “This is all mine and I give it to whomever I wish; just worship before me and it’s all Yours.” Just do it. Don’t think. You can have it all. It is true that the world is the devil’s. He deceived Adam and Eve into obeying him and giving everything to him. But if the devil gives you anything, you can’t keep it. It’s temporary. And you lose your life.

C. Jesus answers, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.”

1. That’s from Deuteronomy 6, which has the confession of faith, Deuteronomy 6:4-16

“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

“Then it shall come about when the LORD your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the LORD your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; otherwise the anger of the LORD your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.

“You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah.

2. Jesus is obeying these words. They are on His heart continually. He loves the Lord His God with all His heart. There is one God to worship, therefore My glory is not relevant. John 5:30 I do not seek My own glory but the glory of the One who sent Me. His glory is all that matters.

4. The devil tempts Jesus to test the Father.

A. He puts Jesus on the highest part of the temple and says, as long as You are the Son of God, jump, and the angels have to catch You because that scripture was written for You. Just do it, don’t think.

B. The devil knows Scripture.

1. He knows its application, that it was written for Jesus. It applies to Him.

2. Notice the devil leaves out part of the verse. He goes around the phrase, “in all your ways.” Evidently he doesn’t want to remind Jesus about His ways, he doesn’t want Jesus to think about His ways. Remember, impulse says, just do it, don’t think.

C. The incredible value of the Scriptures is that they make you think, they give you understanding.

1. Jesus has already thought about His ways because His ways are God’s ways. Psalm 25:10 All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.

2. That lovingkindness is chesed, covenant love. Committed, strong, faithful love. That relationship is founded upon faithfulness, love that will not change.

3. You protect and nurture that relationship, you don’t play with it. You don’t test God to see if He lives up to what you expect out of Him. He can test you. That’s appropriate because He is God and you are His creation. But to switch places with God and test Him to see if He measures up to your expectations is not appropriate, it is arrogant and obnoxious.

4. What Jesus is thinking about we just read, it’s from Deuteronomy 6: “You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah.” There Israel complained about not having meat. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt with ten plagues, parted the Red Sea for their escape and destroyed Pharoah’s army in the waters, fed them manna from heaven. And these people complain they don’t have meat, and they said, “Is God among us or not?”

5. Jesus has meditated on this very issue, thought deeply about it, so that when the devil tries to tempt Jesus to play with His relationship with God and do something arrogant and obnoxious, He recognises it immediately and says “no”. You do not make God serve you, you shall serve the Lord your God, you shall not put Him to the test. You do not say, “How well does God serve my wants?” You say, “How well do I serve His wants?”

6. That’s Jesus’ way. He is the Servant of the Lord prophesied in Isaiah 42:1 “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.” God delights in Him because He delights in God and does all His will in lovingkindness and truth.

7. The devil didn’t want Jesus to think about His way in order to get Him to do something on impulse without thinking, unpremeditated. But Jesus had already thought about His way of lovingkindness and His truth towards the Father. He acted deliberately, not on impulse, but with premeditation.

5. Notice that the devil stops for now.

A. He finished every temptation. For forty days he has launched impulse after impulse. “Just do it. Don’t think.” Jesus has not said so much to the devil, “no”, He has continued to say “yes” to the Father. Yes, Your ways are all lovingkindness and truth

B. But the devil is not finished. He looked for a better opportunity.

1. Now Jesus is alone, in the wilderness, resisting the devil is all He has to do at present.

2. But a better time is coming when Jesus might relax His guard. He might be suggestible under duress. He might not be thinking and premeditating. He might be weak, hungry, tired, stressed, frustrated. All it takes is a simple, just do it, don’t think, and Jesus serves Himself, walks out of step with the Father, reacts in selfishness thinking about His needs and wants, and He is dead.

C. This conflict is to the death. The devil can attack at any time, any occasion, with no warning, no declaration of war. It’s not nice clean fighting. It’s for the rest of Jesus’ life.

6. So what?

A. Jesus is going to win this conflict and destroy him who had the power of death because He has the Father’s zeal to crush the devil.

1. Don’t you think it’s interesting that directly after Jesus is baptised and the Holy Spirit comes upon Him that the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness for the express purpose of being tempted by the devil? The Spirit is expressing the desire of the Father, and the message is: “Go and defy the devil.”

2. Defy means to confront with assured power of resistance. And Jesus resisted the devil in every way for forty days.

3. That’s the zeal of the Father: I defy you. Do your worst.

B. Our salvation depends on the zeal of the Lord.

1. Isaiah 9:7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this. His zeal will establish His government and peace that increases forever.

2. Remember how Jesus made a whip of cords and drove out the moneychangers in the temple? His disciples remembered that it was said of Him, “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.” John 2:17. Why did Jesus stay on the cross when He could have come down and destroyed the whole planet? “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”

C. Do you have that kind of zeal? Only Jesus has that zeal. Only He can save you.

1. In comparison with Jesus you have no zeal for the things of God. You only have zeal for yourself. You are open to every impulse that the devil sends. You don’t think, you just do it.

2. Only by receiving Jesus can you be saved from the wrath to come. You have to trust in His death for you, that He paid for your sins.

3. Only by receiving Jesus can you make it to heaven. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. He has not changed. He still wants to save you to the uttermost with the zeal of the Almighty God.

D. When you receive Jesus the fight is only beginning, and it’s for the rest of your life. Who will you obey, Jesus or the devil? Only Jesus can help you with temptation to sin.

1. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit He will lead you to meditate on Scripture. He wrote it so you could think about it and live life deliberately, premeditated. When you’re not thinking about God’s ways, which are your ways, you live by impulse. You can quote scripture at the devil and all he says is, “Great, but you don’t believe that, do you?” And you say, “You’re right, I don’t.” The battle is lost or won in our hearts because there we believe and hold to be true. The heart is where our doubts and fears and selfishness live. Therefore put scripture in your heart. Then it changes the way you think so you live premeditated and not by impulse.

2. Begin to meditate on Scripture. See if you can do five minutes a day for four days in a row. Ask Jesus to help you in this fight. He has the zeal to help you. You fight back by choosing what you are going to think about. You premeditate your life. God will help you. You that overthink everything and are paralysed to make decisions: what if you took all that brainpower and really overthought Psalm 23? Do you think you could overthink it?

3. It’s a long-range strategy, not a quick fix. Do not be discouraged that it’s taking longer than you want.

4. Think about His things and He will lead you in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Let’s pray.