Introduction
I was reading a book by David Pawson this week called Completing Luther’s Reformation. And, in that book, there were two anecdotes that really struck me.
The first was about a Hell’s Angel known to him who lived in his town.
He was into drugs and motorbikes and antisocial behaviour – and he had an image of Satan tattooed on his chest. Well, he was converted to Christ.
He knew he should be baptized, but he avoided it because he noticed how your shirt goes transparent when you come up out of the water and he didn’t want anybody to see his tattoo of the devil.
So, despite people encouraging him to be baptized, he kept putting it off. Finally, he got hold of a plastic surgeon in his local hospital and he asked if there was any way the tattoo could be removed.
The surgeon said, “Yes, there are two ways. The first is to burn it off, which is very painful and which will leave a big scar. The second is to take a skin graft from your thigh and transplant it on your chest. But it costs a lot of money, you can’t get it on the NHS and you’ll have to wait months.”
The guy said, “I can’t wait, and I haven’t got the money anyway.” So, he asked a friend to baptise him in a garden swimming pool surrounded by other Christian friends.
He went down into the water to bury his past and to wash away his sins, and when he came up out of the water the tattoo had completely and miraculously gone.
The second story was about a friend of his from London. At school he had been good friends with another boy, but after school they lost touch as often happens.
After leaving school, David Pawson's friend became a Christian and eventually a pastor. The other young man got into drugs and crime and his life began to spiral out of control.
Finally, he became suicidal and decided to end it all. Then he remembered his friend from school. He thought, “I wonder where he is now. Maybe he could help me.”
This was before the days of Facebook and he didn’t know how to trace him, so he went to a spiritist medium and said, “Could you help me locate my friend from school?”
She went into a trance and said, “I can describe for you the house he lives in.” She said, “It’s opposite a big park with trees,” and she gave detail after detail. She said, “I can’t give you the exact address but it’s in North London somewhere.”
Then she said, “I’ve got bad news for you. He died a few years ago.” She even gave him the date of death. But out of curiosity he set off anyway and spent weeks looking around North London parks with trees. He finally found a house exactly as the medium had described in the trance.
He knocked at the door and his old friend from school answered it! They talked for a long while, the pastor led him to the Lord and his life began to turn around.
But he said to his pastor friend, “The medium told me you were dead. She even gave me the date of your death.” So the pastor laughed and asked, “Oh really? What date did I die?” He gave it to him. He said, “That was the very day I was baptized.” Buried with Christ in baptism…
Two amazing stories. And I thought I’d share them with you today because they make a bridge between what Phil was saying last Sunday, about baptism, and today’s passage which is Jesus' battle with the devil in the wilderness. We’re in Luke chapter 4.
There’s something about being baptized in water that the devil doesn’t like because it gives you a decisive edge in the spiritual battle.
So following last week’s passage about Jesus’ baptism, after a little parenthesis on his family tree, the very next verse finds Jesus leaving the Jordan and heading into the desert for 40 days of rigorous self-denial, prayer and fasting. Are you up for that?
Matthew says, after Jesus’ baptism, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Mark says it happened “at once”.
Jesus has just been overwhelmed by an outpouring of affection and approval as the Father’s dearly loved only Son at his baptism. He is in a good place. All is well.
Most of you have been there before - or somewhere near it. Your conversion, a glimpse of heaven in worship, your baptism, witnessing an amazing healing, maybe a special night at Stoneleigh or Spring Harvest or something...
It’s great when that happens. But life is not like that all the time. It isn’t for us and it wasn’t for Jesus either.
Let’s read what happens next…
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “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 is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.
Prayer…
If you are going though a season of testing or if you struggle constantly with temptation it doesn’t mean you are a spiritual minnow or that God doesn’t love you.
Terry Virgo says, “Rainbows never appear on clear days. Often you get a clearer view of God’s wonderful covenant faithfulness when you're going through one of life’s storms.”
Temptation is a gymnasium. God allows it in your life because he wants to build up your spiritual muscle.
1) Satan attacks when we are at our most vulnerable (v1-4)
Jesus has not eaten for 40 days. Then Luke adds, with a bit of understatement, “he was hungry.” Jesus is at this time physically spent.
He is suffering from the severe heat by day and the extreme cold by night. Depending on what time of year it was, at midday the temperature could have climbed up to 40° and by midnight it would have dropped to about 4° - colder than a fridge.
Mark’s Gospel mentions that Jesus was with the wild animals. The desert of Judea is a harsh landscape with scorpions, snakes, wolves, jackals and the like.
If Jesus were to write a Trip Advisor review of his 40 day break in the desert it would read like a holiday from hell.
Hotel basic. Food minimal. Air con non-existant. Pests everywhere. Really annoying fellow guest.
Notice that Satan chooses to attack at the moment when Jesus is most vulnerable. Not at the spiritual high of his baptism. He bides his time and holds his fire, waiting for the moment when you are tired, or sick, or alone, or discouraged.
Satan will come to you, just like he came to Jesus, when you are most exposed and he will bait his hook with whatever is attractive to you.
Temptation is bait on a hook. The Devil’s goal is to offer you whatever short-term pleasure draws you to bite his grubby old hook, so he can reel you in towards death. Because sin leads to death.
Satan is like a crooked used car dealer. And he's good at his job. He won’t show you the rust under the chassis. He’ll say, “See how comfortable those leather seats are.” The devil is a salesman; he could sell shaving cream to the Taliban.
So he doesn’t say to Jesus, “Let me be lord of your life and tell you what to do.” He knows Jesus will tell him to get lost so he tries something a bit more subtle. “If you are the Son of God, you can just tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus hasn’t eaten for over a month. He looks at a pile of sand-coloured pebbles in the heathaze and notices how much they look just like freshly baked rolls. He can smell the baker’s shop in Nazareth.
This is how the devil tempts us.
Satan doesn’t say, “Have some unhappiness in your marriage relationship” because you will just think “no thanks.”
He’ll say, “Why not have some fun on this porn site. Nobody’s watching.”
He won’t say, “Why don’t you waste all your money and run up massive debts” because that’s not attractive to anyone.
He’ll say, “Let’s spend an evening gambling. Think of the exhilaration, think of the buzz. It’s your night, I can feel it.”
He won’t say, “I’ll help you become a selfish and lonely person that no one likes” because who wants that?
Instead, he’ll say, “Don’t strain yourself serving and loving others; put your feet up and live a life of ease. Look after number one, you're worth it.”
As so often, Satan plays with doubt. “If you are the Son of God…” With you and me it’s, “If you were a true Christian would you really think what you just thought?” Or, “Do you honestly think God loves you as much as he loves everyone else?” Or, “Surely someone who was genuinely saved would have more faith than you have by now…” Tell him to go to hell!
If you have asked Christ to be your Lord and Saviour, the matter is settled.
You are chosen before the creation of the world, a child of God, born from above, adopted and loved by your heavenly Father, you are the apple of his eye, an inheritor of the kingdom of God, your sin is paid for in full, completely forgiven. Your filthy rags have gone and you are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, with every spiritual blessing in heaven at your disposal. That is what God’s word says about you.
Revelation 12.10 calls Satan “the accuser.” Because he is.
But Jesus is absolutely clear about your spiritual status. This is what he says in John 5.24; “I’m telling you the truth, those who hear my word and believe him who sent me have eternal life and will not be condemned; they have crossed over from death to life.” It couldn’t be clearer.
Jesus is not going to let Satan call the tune for the sake of a bite to eat. “No, Satan, the Bible says, man shall not live by bread alone.” Go away.
2) He wants our worship (v5-8)
So the devil attacks us when we are most defenceless. Next, in v5-8, we get an insight of his ultimate ambition.
What does Satan really want? Ultimately, he wants the whole world to fall down before him in worship.
In v5 he tries to sell Jesus a vain, egotistical dream. He shows Jesus all the glories of the earth; the pyramids of Upper Egypt, the Palace of Versailles, the Pentagon, the Great Wall of China, Sydney Opera House, Hollywood, the Kremlin in Moscow, the Taj Mahal, Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and a thousand other marvels. There’s the bait dangling on the end of his hook.
John Piper says, “Prosperity cannot be a proof of God’s favour, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him.”
It’s the prosperity gospel. “All of this can be yours,” he says. “Name it and claim it. You can be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Just sign here,” says Satan, as he dangles the keys.
Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Because when you check the fine print it says, “The legal owner of all these kingdoms will bow down at Satan’s feet and worship him.”
Do you have desires and aspirations? I hope you do. But don’t let your dreams and ambitions remove God from first place in your life.
Jesus again counters Satan’s offer with scripture. It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
I was watching an interview with Bible scholar Wayne Grudem recently where he talked about a friend of his called Vern Poythress.
I first met Vern Poythress he said, at Harvard University where he was a first year PhD student in mathematics. He had done his undergraduate degree at Caltech where he was first in his class academically. I saw him reviewing with a note card on a Bible passage; he would read, look up and look away and then look down and move the note card down - he was reviewing what he had memorised in scripture. I said to him “have you memorised very much of the Bible?” He said, ‘some.’ I said, ‘how much?’ And he said, ‘Well, the Gospel of John.’ I said, ‘Anything else?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Romans to 3 John.’” He had memorised all the New Testament epistles and an entire Gospel by his early- to mid-twenties.
I’m never going to memorise that much and I don’t expect you will, but to commit a few key, strategic Bible verses to memory is such a lethal weapon against Satan in times of temptation.
3) He diverts us from our calling (v9-13)
Finally in v9-13 we see that Satan doesn’t give up if he fails the first or second time.
Like those velociraptors in Jurassic Park who repeatedly spring out at the electrified bars on their cage, on the off chance they’ll find a weakness, the devil keeps chipping away at our defences.
“If you are the Son of God…” he says in v9. There he goes again!
Because he knows that some of us, if we listen to the same half truth over and over again, if it’s relentless, it will grind down our resistance and will end up accepting it, just for a quiet life.
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple.”
For the devil’s next trick he gets out his pocket NIV.
Satan knows that a verse out of Psalm 91 can sound quite convincing. “He will tell his angels to catch you so you won’t so much as stub your toe.”
Taking verses in Ecclesiastes out of context, I could preach pessimism, existentialism, cynicism, scepticism, alcoholism, sexism and even atheism.
But if you read the Bible systematically, rather than a verse here and a verse there, you will not be fooled by the devil’s lightweight Bible studies.
Satan is trying to deflect Jesus from his mission. Jesus could have his name in lights and be a great circus act. He can have celebrity and fame.
If Satan can get Jesus doing trick for his adoring public, maybe he’ll forget his mission to take up his cross, and suffer, and be rejected and die to take away the sins of the world.
Satan wants to get you off track from your destiny too. God has good plans for you, but Satan wants to lure you into useless vanity projects instead.
Here’s the bait dangling before you. Bite the hook and you’ll go nowhere with God and waste the gifts he has given you.
Ending
If only years of Christian living somehow made temptation easier to overcome.
Unfortunately, in my experience anyway, it doesn’t. But temptation is not sin as long as you resist it.
There’s a story about a married Christian businessman who is driving to a three-day marketing conference and he is car sharing, at his company’s request, with a pretty young colleague.
Halfway there, she says to him that she finds him attractive. A bit later, her hand accidentally on purpose brushes his knee. He says nothing, and carries on driving until he gets to a service station. He stops, saying he needs to fill up the car and make a quick phone call.
10 minutes later, they’re back on the road and she asks if the call was urgent. “Oh yes!” he replies, “very urgent. I had to call my pastor. I said ‘pray for me brother because there's a woman in my car who is trying to seduce me’!” The atmosphere changes in an instant.
Let me end with some practical application.
Jesus arrives the desert, v1 tells us, “full of the Holy Spirit.” In v14 Jesus leaves the desert, after all those temptations, not battered and exhausted, but in the power of the Spirit, strong and victorious.
What's the best way to resist and overcome temptation? Be continually filled with the Holy Spirit.
That’s why Galatians 5.16 says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Let’s stand to pray...
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 1st August 2021
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