We are in Luke 4 tonight. Paul read for us from verses 1 all the way down to verse 13 of the temptation of Jesus Christ.
! I'm probably going to pull off a nifty trick because I'll eventually preach on the whole Luke 4 just now, but I had Paul think that I'm only going to preach in the first 12 verses.
And you've got to be warned, I've had a nap this afternoon, and so it means it's going to be a long sermon. I hope you're strapped in quite comfortably.
And so, yeah, that's all good.
Luke 4, it follows, of course, what's happened at the beginning of the Gospel.
And we've all enjoyed Christmas, I hope, and we have reminded ourselves of the birth of Jesus Christ.
And we've most likely looked at various texts in the Gospels describing the birth of Jesus Christ.
And so we're at the beginning of the Gospel, and you can trace the story of God's Son, Jesus Christ, who is born.
And then as he is born, he is also eventually baptized, circumcised first, and then baptized later as an adult.
And he is then tempted in the desert.
That's what we've just read of.
Now, I want to help you do a number of things.
The first thing is a little bit harder to do, and that is to take your Christian faith out of the Victorian myth category.
And hopefully we are not there, but where you somehow treat your Christian faith as a great heartwarming story
that you pay attention to on a Sunday morning, a Sunday evening, and perhaps when you read the Bible at various stages.
But where you carry on with your visceral, physical, flesh-and-blood life, well, there it's doggy-dog.
There it is, a different set of rules that apply.
And it's there that, well, decisions that I make there, well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
But in church, well, that world is apart.
So I live with a sort of dualism between the heavenly spiritual things and the earthly fleshy things.
There's a dichotomy there.
There's a separation there.
And I want to show you that the way to straddle this gap, to not live in this dualism, is the Word of God.
It is God's Word that straddles this gap between the reality of heaven and God and angels and Satan and demons
and the reality of this world and work and play and school and everything else.
What straddles the gap is the Word of God.
In other words, if you want to live a really rich life,
where you're not just moving superficially through this created world, through the city, on the train, on your bicycle, at home,
just dealing with immediate emotions, a desire for food, you're tired, you want to sleep,
just dealing with physical, fleshy things,
if you want to pursue, if you're not a Christian, you want to pursue a much richer, deeper experience of reality,
the way to do that is to pay attention to the Word.
It is the Word that can open up a world of richness to you with depth and with texture and with imagination
and with exhilarating truths and fantastic stories and just opens up a much richer reality to you.
If you want to straddle that gap, it's the Word of God that does it.
And this shouldn't be unfamiliar to you, that you can live in two realities.
Just yesterday, I was driving to the co-op down the road, and I was going to buy some milk,
and I could see a couple just standing.
It's raining.
I don't want to be outside.
That's why I'm driving to the store.
It's raining.
And there they stand with their raincoats on, just looking at their phones.
I had to think as I'm driving.
They are living in two worlds at that very moment.
I want to get out of the rain.
I want to move.
I want to get some, but they're completely sucked into whatever is on their phone.
So it's possible for you to be physically present in a certain circumstance whilst mentally in another place.
And I'm not talking about Facebook's metaverse just yet, but that's what they're selling.
It's sort of grabbing us and our attention out of this world, out of the physical realm,
and pushing it into another realm, one that they've made and created.
How do I straddle the gap between heaven and earth?
The Word of God.
Where do I get it in this passage?
Well, that is for me also the million-dollar question.
Let's look at the passage, and I hope I can show you how it fits together.
Now, it is the temptation of Jesus Christ.
And right from the off, we learn that Jesus had just finished his time in the wilderness that lasted for 40 days.
40 days.
And after this time in the desert of 40 days, something strange happens.
Verse 3 tells us that the devil came and tempted him, asking,
if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.
Now, this is where it gets weird.
And if you're not a Christian, you think, hang on, the devil?
Are we, are you sure?
I mean, it feels like I've slipped down a rabbit hole, and it's a fantasy novel.
I'm expecting magicians on broomsticks to fly by any moment.
It feels like you've taken me from a very visceral story.
This whole story is based in history.
We're getting mentions of Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch.
You can date the things that's happened.
It happened in real time, in real history.
And whoa, all of a sudden, we're dealing with the devil.
We're dealing with temptation and this strange business where Jesus goes from the wilderness
to a mountaintop and then to the pinnacle of the temple.
It feels like everything has just gone off track a little bit.
And it's just suddenly spiritual, metaphysical, different reality all of a sudden.
Please don't shut off.
Don't take this passage that doesn't fit your neat, perhaps conservative, evangelical, rational world
where you can look at historical facts and evidence for Jesus and fit it all together.
It doesn't fit that neat world because it speaks of demons and devils and angels in a spiritual way
that you find a little bit uncomfortable.
Don't shut it down.
No, do the hard work of bringing the spiritual and the physical together through the Word of God.
It's Jesus that straddles this gap.
And the clue is in the 40 days.
You see, the 40 days mimics something or at least recapitulates something that happens in the Old Testament
in a very real sense.
It's the 40 years that God's first son, Israel, was in the wilderness.
And you'll soon see that everything that happens with Jesus in this temptation
is essentially a smaller, shorter, compacted version of everything that happened
in flesh and blood history to Israel in the whole Old Testament.
Yes, Israel was in the wilderness 40 years.
Yes, Jesus in the wilderness 40 days.
And then Israel, well, God met Moses on Mount Zion and there he gave him his Word.
And whilst God was meeting with his church, with his people, with his first son Israel
and making covenant with them from the mountaintop, well, the people were making a golden calf
and worshiping it.
But there's a mountaintop experience in Israel's history.
They go from the wilderness to the mountain and from the mountain they eventually end up
in the promised land and the temple.
And that's where Jesus' temptation takes him next, to the temple, to the pinnacle of the temple.
And so this is a clue that helps you to see that far from being simply spiritual, metaphysical,
this whole thing that happened to Jesus when he's being tempted,
it's actually something that's happened in flesh and blood real time
to God's first son Israel in the whole Old Testament.
And you've got to start seeing that there is a congruence between what happens in the physical realm
to that which happens in the spiritual realm.
There is a connection between these two things.
Strange.
It shouldn't surprise us, should it?
Ephesians 6 says, put on the full armor of God
so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world,
and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
There is supposed to be a connection between the heavenly realms
and this physical experience that we live in this world.
And if you want to straddle the gap, you can finish that sentence by now.
You need the word of God.
That's exactly what Jesus came to do.
He is the word in the flesh.
And he's here to straddle that gap.
To show us that he is the way, the truth, and the life.
And if we want to have a fuller understanding of reality,
we need him to lead us in this way.
So the devil tempts Jesus.
And he tempts him on these three occasions.
In the wilderness, on the mountaintop, and in the temple.
He tempts Jesus.
But why is he tempting Jesus?
It's Hermann Barfing that said,
The essence of the Christian religion consists in this,
that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin,
is restored in the death of the Son of God,
and recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit
into a kingdom of God.
It's this mission that the devil was trying to stop.
First in the first son, Israel.
Before that, in Adam and Eve.
And now in Jesus.
And then in the New Testament church,
the church that we live in now.
He wants to stop this mission where God's creation,
ruined by sin,
that has been restored in the death of the Son of God.
If Jesus did not die,
the restoration would not have been possible.
So the devil wants to stop this mission,
this project.
It would not have been possible,
so that it can then not just be restored,
but recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
as we build the kingdom of God.
So the devil schemes as to interrupt this plan.
And he tempts Jesus after 40 days in the desert,
then on a mountaintop,
and then on the top of the temple.
And the heart of his temptation is a single question,
if you are the Son of God.
He asks this basic question about Jesus' identity.
If you are the Son of God, do this.
If you're not the Son of God, don't do this.
If you are the Son of God, do this.
But it's the Son of God,
the identity of him as Son of God,
that is where the real battle line lies.
If you continue to read Luke 4,
you'll see that Jesus then follows up this temptation
with miracles that proves that he is the Son of God.
He drives out demons,
he heals the ill, the unwell,
and he speaks with such authority
that people start to say,
hang on,
this man is the Son of God.
So the people start to recognize
what the devil wanted to suppress,
that which Jesus knew.
So God's Word,
God's Word,
is that which helps us to straddle the gap
between the spiritual and the physical,
the heavenly and the earthly.
But how does he do that?
We read Luke 4,
and the following thing happens.
Jesus is in the temple,
in the synagogue.
And it's on the Sabbath day
that he preaches.
And in verse 17 we read,
and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah
was given to him.
He unrolled the scroll,
he found the place where it's written.
And this is what's written.
But before I read what's written,
Jesus stands up,
he reads this.
When he's done reading this,
he will say this.
He will say,
everything you've just heard,
the prophet said,
is about me.
Everything I've just read
from the prophet,
it's me.
So let me read what he reads on Isaiah.
He reads in verse 18,
It's me.
That's what Jesus is saying.
He's reading this prophecy from Isaiah,
and he says,
I am the anointed one.
I am the son of God.
And can you imagine the scene
in that synagogue?
It's a bit silent.
Jesus has just read it.
He's received the scroll
from the synagogue assistant.
If I had one of my sons,
they would have brought me
the scroll.
I would unfurl it
and stand here,
then read,
and then with drama
and suspense,
slowly roll it up
and hand it,
and they take it,
and they put it away.
And then everyone
with suspense
wait to hear what Jesus
has to say about
what he's just read.
This is what he says.
He rolled up the scroll,
gave it back to the attendant,
and sat down.
And the eyes of all
in the synagogue
were fixed on him.
And he began to say,
Today,
this scripture
has been fulfilled
in your hearing.
Today.
So everyone sitting there
looking at Jesus
starts to make
the calculation
in their minds.
The anointed one,
today this has been fulfilled.
They know the reports
of Jesus healing people
and setting captives free.
They're starting to think,
well,
perhaps,
who knows,
but look what happens.
And all spoke well
of him
and marveled
at the gracious words
that were coming
from his mouth.
You see what happened?
Jesus said,
I am the one,
and people started
to calculate it,
and then as they sat there,
they said,
mind blown,
this is him.
This is the anointed one.
This is Jesus.
Now we said,
if we want to straddle the gap
between the spiritual
and the real,
we need the word of God.
And what Jesus was doing
at the very point,
he was saying to them,
I am the word of God.
Not,
here is the word of God
in a scroll
written up for you
to go and read,
but the word of God
is physically
in front of you
in three dimensions
right here in front of you.
If you want to straddle the gap,
don't just listen
to the teaching,
but eat me
through faith.
I'll explain that later,
but eat me through faith.
I want to say that
in a slightly jarring way
so that you don't
make the mistake
that the audience
made in the synagogue
at the time,
they were listening
to Jesus
as he was reading,
much like you might
listen to a sermon
when someone is preaching.
I agree with that.
That's fine.
Okay,
that makes sense to me.
But yet,
and this has happened
in our church,
yet your job is
you work for a gambling firm
and so tomorrow
you go back
and you write algorithms
for a firm
that essentially
makes the poor poorer
by stealing their money
through little phone apps
and you don't think
twice about that
because, you know,
I've been able
to separate two things.
I can think about Jesus
and about how interesting
the Bible
and the gospel
and all of these things,
but flesh and blood stuff
doesn't matter.
I can live it
the way I want to live.
These two things
don't need to come together.
But Jesus won't leave you there
and what you do
with Jesus,
what you do with Jesus
will reveal
how you view him.
Perhaps you've not read this,
but we've read it
in Canada Water Church
in Luke 2
where Simeon
picks up the baby
and says to Mary,
the sun is destined
for the fall
and rise of many
and essentially
he will provoke
a response
from everybody.
Well, Jesus provoked
a response here
in Luke 4.
The response was
that people listened
to him and loved him.
That was the first thing
they did.
The second thing
they did
is they said,
but hang on,
you're the son of Joseph.
You're one of the kids
of our town,
of our village.
And we've heard
you've done some great stuff
in other little villages.
Put us on the map.
You're one of us.
Come do some stuff
for us as well.
Why don't you come
and do a lot of miracles
over here
so people will flock in
and come to our little town
and we'll become famous
for having Jesus,
the miracle worker
around here.
They wanted to co-opt Jesus.
And listen to what they've done.
They've heard the word,
but instead of doing
the only thing
that you could do
when Jesus reveals himself
as the word of God,
that is to fall down
and worship him,
they wanted to co-opt him.
They wanted to get him
under their thumb.
They wanted to get him
as one of them.
They refused,
in other words,
to accept that Jesus
is speaking of
a different reality
that will require them
to relinquish the way
that they viewed
the world
until the very moment
and say,
here is the one
and we are to worship him.
It's not surprising
what they do next.
Continue reading Luke 4.
You see that
when Jesus finally says,
look,
you want me to perform
miracles for you.
Be your performing
miracle worker.
But God's prophets
like Elijah and Elisha
is beholden to no one.
We are in no one's pocket.
We work for God
and for God alone.
Elisha and Elijah
did it the same.
They yield foreigners
instead of Israelites.
Don't expect me
to work for you.
I'm not in your pocket.
I am from God
and I'm for God
and I will exist
to proclaim his gospel
fully and completely.
That is what he's saying.
And when he said that,
they rose up.
Well, first,
when they heard these things,
all in the synagogue
were filled with wrath
and they rose up
and drove him
out of the town
and brought him
to the brow of the hill
on which their town
was built
so that they could
throw him down the cliff.
But passing through
their midst,
he went away.
This is the same group
of people
that marveled
at him speaking
and then quietly resented
that he didn't want
to be co-opted by them
and then raged
with anger enough
to want to kill him
when he didn't fit
their agenda.
Is this so dissimilar
to what happens
in Jesus' temptation?
Just think about that
for a moment.
The devil comes three times
to tempt Jesus.
He tempts Jesus
in the wilderness,
make bread for yourself
out of these words.
Jesus rebukes him
with scripture.
He tries a second time.
He refuses to fall down
and worship Jesus.
He tries a second time.
He takes him
to the high top.
He says,
if you fall down
and worship me,
you'll get all the authority
with me
over all of these towns
and kingdoms.
And Jesus again
rebuts him
with scripture.
And then he ups
the ante a little bit
and he takes him
to the top
of the temple.
And there he quotes
scripture back at him
and he says,
if you throw yourself
off this high pinnacle,
he will command
these angels
that will scoop you
up in their hands
and you will not
strike your feet.
He warps scripture
and Jesus responds
with scripture.
And these three temptations
in my understanding
of this text
gets reenacted
in some way
in the way
that the Jews
in the synagogue
respond to Jesus.
and the reason
I want to put
these two next
to each other
and I'm pretty sure
my New Testament professor
isn't listening
to this at the moment.
He said,
once you've seen
three points
that make neat sense
and you want to fit
the rest of the passage
into your little model,
you're most likely
on the wrong path.
Could be.
But hear me on this
and see if you
see the correlation.
Is that
this
almost fantasy
novel-like
experience of Jesus
on being tempted
by the devil?
Wilderness,
mountaintop,
temple.
Is reenacted
in the physical realm
through
the people
in the synagogue
that refuses
to believe
that Jesus
is the word of God.
That refuses
to believe
that Jesus
is to be worshipped.
They want to
co-opt him.
And refuses
to believe
that Jesus
will not allow
scripture
to be warped
for nonsensical
purposes.
No,
he exists
only
to glorify God
and he will not
throw himself
down a cliff
or jump
off the tip
of a temple.
Jesus
straddles
this gap
between the spiritual
and the real
because he is
the word
of God.
Let's make this
practical for a minute.
if your faith
as a Christian
is currently
sustained
on fridge
magnets,
on tweets,
or on
Facebook posts,
you will use
the scriptures
in the same way
as Satan
used the scriptures
against the Lord Jesus.
If you sustain
your spiritual faith
with tidbits,
you will warp it
and misunderstand
that Jesus
came
as the
son of God
in the flesh
to straddle
the gap
between heaven
and earth
so that he
will one day
bring heaven
and earth
together
in the new
heavens
and new
earth.
And you
will have
such a low
view of what
Jesus came
to accomplish
that you'd
be likely
to do
not just
what the devil
did with Jesus
but do
what the synagogue
rulers
and those
listening to him
did the first
time.
You might as
well stop
with that
because where
that ends
is you
want to join
in the crowd
by throwing
Jesus off a
cliff because
he will not
be beholden
to a fridge
magnet or a
tweet or to
whatever your
particular agenda
is at the
moment.
He will reveal
through his
actions and
through his
words that
he is the
Lord of the
universe and
there's only
one right
response to
him and
that's to
fall down
and worship
him.
And so
if you
sustain your
spiritual walk
at the
moment with
tidbits,
be very
careful.
It's the
word of God
that straddles
the gap and
here we are
at the
beginning of
the year.
Would you
take up the
word and
read it this
year?
If you are
here tonight
and you
don't have
a regular
Bible reading
plan where
you immerse
yourself in
the scriptures,
where you
allow the
scriptures to
come at
you,
not just
this short
sayings,
not just
this little
teachings.
If you're
reading a
Bible devotional
at the
moment that
just has
two verses
at the
top and
a lot of
human speech
below it and
a little
summary prayer
at the
bottom,
you can't
sustain your
faith with
that.
You've got
to come
into the
Bible which
is a world.
The Bible
comes to you
not just as
little tidbits,
as little
sayings.
Of course
there's
sayings in
there.
There's
wisdom literature,
there's
psalms,
there's
songs,
there's
narrative
there's
history,
there's
prophecy,
there's
a whole
world in
the Bible.
And here
at the
beginning of
the year,
God is
enticing you
to come
into this
world so
that you
get to
know him
not just
as words
on a
page,
but you
get to
know him
as the
person that
can stand
up in the
midst of the
synagogue
and say,
man shall
not live
by bread
alone,
but by
every word
that proceeds
from my
mouth.
Hang on,
he didn't
say that.
Huh?
Did he?
Kids,
I'll do a
trick quickly.
What's
noticeable
about me
at the
moment?
What's
about me
moment?
what's
drawing your
attention
at the
moment?
Except for
my striking
good looks
and the
fact that
I wear
a jean.
I've
never
worn a
jean
in church,
but here
we go.
There's
something
missing,
isn't
there?
That's
what's
drawing
your
attention.
Now,
when Jesus
spoke to
the devil
the first
time,
and he
said to
the devil,
man cannot
live
by
bread
alone.
You know
a Jewish
reader,
when they
read Luke
and they
hear that
first
phrase,
they want
to finish
it.
Can anyone
finish it?
Let me
first ask
children,
can you
finish,
how does
that sentence
go?
Man cannot
live by
bread
alone,
but
by every
word that
proceeds from
my mouth.
That is a
quote from
Deuteronomy
8.
And when
Jesus said
to Satan,
man cannot
live by
bread
alone,
and the
reader of
Luke's
gospel read
that passage,
he wanted
to fill in
the dot
where it
says,
but by
the word
that proceeds
from God's
mouth.
That is how
we live.
And so
Jesus was
drawing attention
to that
which was
missing,
and that
he is
the word
of God
in the
flesh,
and that
you will
live,
not just
when you
tickle your
ears with
the gospel
where you
hear God's
word and
say,
that's good,
but you
live the
way that
you want
to live.
He is
the word
that proceeds
from God's
mouth.
He is
God's
word.
He is
the one
that as
we hear
him,
we shouldn't
just hear
him,
we should
eat him.
He should
become our
bread of
heaven.
In the
same way
as Israel
in Deuteronomy
are panting
for food
and God
gives them
food out
of heaven.
He is
the one
that we
are to
eat if
we want
to live.
He is
the rock
on whom
we should
build our
lives if
we want
to straddle
the gap
between
the heavenly
and the
earthly.
And so
the invitation
of this
passage is
that you
will come
and eat
the Lord
Jesus
through
faith.
Israel
failed in
the temptations
against
Satan.
Jesus
succeeded
fully.
You are
now the
new
Israel
as
God's
church.
You are
now the
new
Israel.
And so
these
temptations
will take
different
forms in
our lives
where the
question
will come
is Jesus
the son
of God
that is
to be
worshipped?
And the
scripture
says yes
he is.
And you
follow that
up with a
life of
conviction
as you
live in
that light.
And I
want to
close with
this.
If we
are the
new
Israel
and we
are,
then we
can go
back to
the word
of God
not just
the New
Testament
bits that
we enjoy
reading but
we can
read the
Old Testament
with a
new
understanding
to say
we are
the new
Israel.
The promises
of God
to his
people of
old has
been fulfilled
in Jesus
Christ and
we can
therefore stand
in confidence
and boldness
in the broken
world that we
live in that
God will do
what he has
promised to
do and
that is that
he will
fix this
world.
He will
come and
he will
redeem it all
and he will
finish his
mission for
which he
has come.
So let
me read
these words
in closing
from Zephaniah
3 verse 14
and it's
Old Testament
written to
Israel at
the restoration
of Jerusalem.
Will you
believe that
this is true
of God's
church today?
Will you
believe that
this is true
of you
today?
And will
you start
to live
with a
richness
of experience
as you know
that the
world is not
just flesh
and blood
stuff in
front of us.
It's rich
with God's
promises and
he will
fulfill them.
Sing aloud
O daughter
of Zion
shout O
Israel
rejoice and
exult with
all your
heart.
O daughter
of Jerusalem
the Lord
has taken
away the
judgments
against you.
He has
cleared away
your enemies.
The King
of Israel
the Lord
is in your
midst.
You shall
never again
fear evil.
On that
day it
shall be
said to
Jerusalem
fear not
O
Zion
let not
your hands
grow weak.
The Lord
your God
is in your
midst.
The mighty
one who
will save.
He will
rejoice over
you with
gladness.
He will
quiet you
by his
love.
He will
exult over
you with
loud singing.
I will
gather those
of you who
mourn for
the festival
so that you
will no longer
suffer reproach.
Behold at
that time I
will deal
with all
your oppressors
and I will
save the
lame and
gather the
outcasts and
I will
change their
shame into
praise and
renown in
all the
earth.
At that
time I
will bring
you in.
At the
time when I
gather you
together for
I will make
you renowned
and praised
among
all the
peoples of
the earth
when I
restore your
fortunes before
your eyes
says the
Lord.
Let me
pray.
Let me
Thank you.