Let’s start with a Test
An election has been called. And you have a choice. Should I vote for Mr Albanese or Mr Morrison?
Well, I don’t know. What I want to know is, how will it turn out? Which one will make the right decisions when called on? Which one will say no to self-interest, factional party-politics, or pressure from powerful people. And which one will say yes to righteousness, justice, governing to please God, not the people, governing for the good of all, especially the powerless and marginalized? Which one will be the squeakiest of squeaky clean when they are under enormous pressure?
Mr Howard always used to say, ‘My guarantee is my record’. It is good to see what people have done to know how they react. But when we elect a new leader, we don’t know how they’ll act. They’ve never been in this position before.
It is important to know this, because when a leader sins, their sins effect everyone. When a leader sins, the repercussions are worse and wider.
Think of King David. He sins, and the nation of Israel suffers with civil war.
Think of when a President sins, or even just makes a mistake of judgment. Caught with a whitehouse intern, or no weapons of Mass Destruction. The whole country is shamed and embarrassed.
Or think of when a sporting leader becomes compromised. Drugs, or inappropriate text messaging, or sex scandals. It’s all over the papers because they are role models.
Closer to home, we feel the same when a Christian Minister or leader sins and shames the gospel. It is embarrassing to us all when a minister commits adultery.
Hey, why don’t we put our leaders through rigorous tests? Let’s do it before he starts. Let’s find out how this person, this leader, will react when pushed to the very edge. How far can we push him before he cracks?
Perhaps we should set up trial periods of government, a probationary period. A PM with training wheels. I guess we do that by having elections every 3 years. Give the new clergyman his L’s and let him drive around with supervision for a while. It’s called a ‘curacy’ in our system, being an Assistant Anglican Minister under a Senior Minister.
For lawyers, there is such a place of testing under supervision.. The College of Law at St Leonards. When I went through in 1995, it was set up as a little world of it’s own. We were all put in pretend law firms, conveying pretend property, defending pretend clients before real lawyers acting as pretend judges in pretend courts. We banked our pretend cheques at the pretend bank. We’ld get pretend bank statements for our pretend trust account. And have to manage our pretend files.
Why did they do this to grown men and women? Because they wanted to test us to see if we were competent before they let us out on the unsuspecting community.
But those tests were easy. It was all in a controlled environment. No-one really lost a court case or lost money from a bad settlement. It was all in the end like a game.
You cannot fake real pressure. As any soldier will tell us that army exercises have their place, but it is completely different to a war. Sleepless nights, lack of food and home comforts. If you fail, the whole nation is at risk. If you fail it could mean the lives of your countrymen. Being killed is a real possibility. This is no drill. It is no training exercise. It is the real thing. And even if you pass all the written exams, all the fitness tests, all the training exercises, there is nothing like combat. So Keith Miller,
At the end of chapter 3, we have seen Jesus as a feotus and as a baby. We’ve seen him as a 12 year old. We’ve seen him be baptized. We’ve seen the holy Spirit descend on him. We’ve heard God’s voice, ‘This is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.’ We’ve seen his pedigree and his bloodline. But we haven’t seen him doing his work yet. We haven’t seen him tested.
But testing is the first thing Jesus undergoes. And it is a testing of the most intense sort. There is no honeymoon period for the newly declared ‘Son of God’. There is no settle in, get your bearings, hope you can get to know everyone a bit. Rather, he faces a rigorous fast for 40 days in the desert with the devil at him for the duration.
The first thing is that we see that the Holy Spirit is involved in the process of Jesus’ being tested. Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. And he is led by the Spirit into the desert. So undergoing this temptation, this testing, is part of God’s will for his Christ. And that’s important for us to remember. When we are tempted, God is not abandoning us. He wants to see us pass the test that he has set us.
But second, we see that the devil is directly involved in the testing. We see it is the devil who is the immediate agent of temptation.
And so immediately we are confronted with the question, ‘What is God’s role in these temptations?’ The Spirit is involved in the testing. The Devil is involved in the testing. How do these two things relate.
And the way I put these two things together is this. God is not the author of temptation. Temptation to sin is something that God doesn’t directly do. But God indirectly uses temptation to test his people. He allows and decrees and permits the devil to go this far, and only this far, in testing God’s people. Remember Job, for example. God could have stopped the devil if he wanted. But for his own good reasons, he allows the devil to tempt people in our world. So when we pray ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’, it is a real prayer. God can and does do something about the temptations we face. He can lift it from us if he sees it is too great for us. He can strengthen us in the midst of it. He can provide a way out so that we can stand up under it.
But we also say with James, that God tempts no-one to sin. God is never the author of sin. Rather, he hates sin, and he has told us to flee sin. And so it is the devil, not God, who tempts the Christ. And it is our own sinful nature, manipulated by the satanic powers, not God, which tempts us. God allows it all and will bring good out of it. But the devil, not God, is rightly called the Tempter.
The temptation of Jesus reminds us of two Old Testament events.
First, the temptation of Adam and Eve. Here we have Jesus engaging with the age old foe of humanity. It was Satan who brought Adam and Eve undone. Eve doubted and denied God’s word. And Adam abdicated responsibility and went along with his wife. But here is Jesus, the second Adam, the Last Adam, doing battle again, believing God’s word and responding to the tempter with it.
Second, Jesus’ temptation was for 40 days in the desert. The 40 days of Jesus in the desert echoes the 40 years Israel wandered in the desert. Except Jesus obeyed where Israel failed. Where the people grumbled about bread, Jesus said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’. Where the people provoked and tested and tried God again and again, Jesus refused to put the Lord his God to the test. Where the people fell into idolatry and false worship, Jesus said he would only worship and serve the Lord his God. Jesus succeeded where Israel failed.
Jesus obeyed where humanity in Adam and God’s people in Israel failed. Before Jesus has healed one person, cast out one demon, or exercised his divine Sonship over his world, Luke has shown us that Jesus’ passes the test. Jesus engaged in fierce testing up close and personal with the devil at the beginning of his work. So we as readers know we have one fit to complete and finish his work, our salvation.
But someone might say, ‘Of course Jesus never sinned. He’s God, isn’t he. The Holy Spirit is with him. Of course he can say no to temptation. He was God. It was easy for him.
Why do we sometimes think it was easy for Jesus to say no to temptation? He became truly human. Because Jesus did not give in, we can only imagine that Satan increased the pressure. Everyone else who ever sinned never exercised Satan’s fullest temptations. Because we at some point gave in. We really didn’t make Satan work for it. It was all too easy. With us, Satan won his battles without using his full force.
But because Jesus never gave in. For 40 days while he was hungry, tired, and uncomfortable, he experienced everything that Satan could muster. He provoked him to his most cunning temptations by his continual refusal. Precisely because he is sinless, Jesus endured everything the devil could throw at him[1].
So this is why he is the perfect saviour. Not only is Jesus sinless, and thus the perfect high priest. But Jesus endured the fullest extent of temptation, and thus knows the extent of the pain of temptation, without giving in to temptation and becoming a sinner. Well does the author to the Hebrews remind us:
Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:18 NIV)
And again:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16 NIV)
We have a sympathetic suffering Saviour. So we can go to him in the midst of our temptation and weakness.
But the temptation in the desert wasn’t the last time Jesus had to fight Satan. We have those pregnant words, And when the devil had finished every test, he left Jesus until an opportune time. When Peter offered Jesus the crown without a cross at Caesarea Phillipi, Jesus’ stinging words remind us the battle was not yet over. ‘Get behind me Satan, you do not have in mind the things of men, but the things of God’. And in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus faced the abandonment of God his Father. Yet he resolutely strode to the cross that Satan through Judas was preparing for him. The battle in the desert showed Jesus was fit to fight the war for us which followed.
The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. But he then led him home. Jesus returns to Nazareth. But this time he returns on his Father’s business. He comes not as a carpenter and a mother’s son, but as Saviour and Lord. So he is found in the synagogue where he grew up, not in his parent’s home. And his Father’s work is teaching from Scripture. And what does Jesus find in the Old Testament Scriptures.
Luke slows his whole story down to show us. He goes into his home synagogue. He stands up to read. He takes the scroll of Isaiah. He unrolls it. He finds his text. He rolls it up. He gives it back. He sits down. Every eye is fixed on him. This is all Luke’s equivalent of a drumroll. What’s he going to say? What is his big teaching point, his big idea? He began to speak to them. ‘Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.
In other words, it’s all about me. Isaiah talked about me. The Old Testament is about me. The Spirit of the Lord is on me. He has anointed me. I am his Christ. I evangelise. I preach forgiveness. I preach freedom. Now is the time of favour. The jubilee, where the captives get free, has come with me. I, me, mine. It’s all about me.
Jesus preaches himself, just like we do now. Jesus himself had a Jesus-centred ministry. And so should we.
But it’s a bit hard for the locals to handle. They thought they knew him. ‘Is this not the son of Joseph?’
Luke has already given us the backstory. No, he’s not the natural son of Joseph. He was conceived as a direct result of the Holy Spirit. Joseph had nothing to do with it. It was only thought that he was the son of Joseph. And it seems that the people of Nazareth baulk at accepting Jesus’ ‘me-centred’ theology because they think they know where he is from.
So that’s why Jesus has some harsh words for his hometown. Just as John the Baptist called the congregation, ‘Offspring of Snakes’, and asked them who told them to flee from the coming wrath, so Jesus says to his neighbours gathered together in the church in which he grew up, ‘Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his home town.’ Indeed, he promised them no signs. He said that he wasn’t going to perform one thing for them. We are not told why Jesus won’t do any of the miracles. Probably it was because lack of faith. That is, they did not accept Jesus for who he was. They could not get beyond what they thought they knew. ‘This here is the son of Joseph’.
Jesus cites two examples of Gentiles who receive grace when Jews didn’t. The first was the Widow of Zarephath in the time of Elijah. The second was Namaan the Syrian in the time of Elisha. And both of these are pointers to where the gospel is going to go. Because Luke wrote two volumes: He wrote Luke and Acts. And the mission of the risen Christ involves the gospel being spread to the whole earth. And Namaan and the Widow of Zarephath are reminders that God always has been the God of every nation, and not just of the Jews.
But the thought of God favouring Gentiles over Jews is enough to make his friends want to kill him. A somewhat extreme reaction to not getting to see any miracles. All they had to do is follow Jesus down the road to Capernaum, because they would have seen plenty there.
At the end of Chapter 4, we see Jesus teaching, driving out demons, and healing those oppressed with potentially fatal illnesses. Jesus shows himself Lord over sickness, and the demons obey him. A continual pattern is that Jesus silences the demons. He doesn’t let them speak. That is interesting, because the demons are only saying what God the Father said at Jesus’ baptism. ‘You are the Son of God’. At that point they speak the truth. Perhaps Jesus doesn’t want them to say who he is so he can preach more freely. Or perhaps Jesus doesn’t want them to speak, period. The demons are liars, and the truth is not worthy of them. And Jesus will not accept their testimony about him, even when it is true. Jesus’ actions may be reminding us, ‘Never listen to a demon, even if what he says is true, because they put a bit of truth in every lie’. And anyway, demons are not the way we find out about God.
But by the end of chapter 4, the news has spread far and wide about Jesus. Crowds hunt him down. When they find him way out in the desert, the try to keep him. They hang onto him, trying to detain him. And I imagine they did so for good reason. There were many needy people who needed teaching and healing and freedom from demons. But Jesus’ response is, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not just for your parish.’ Bottom of page 19. “It is essential that I announce the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities as well, because that is why I was sent”.
And his good news is ‘Me’. Jesus has a Jesus-centred gospel. I am the good news, says Jesus. I bring forgiveness and freedom. I am the way God brings his jubilee.
And this is still the case. We preach Christ. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. Forgiveness is found in his name. Jesus is the Son of God who brings us freedom from captivity to sin, death and the devil. That is why Jesus was sent. And that is why we meet here. Because Jesus is the good news that he himself announces. Let’s pray.
[1] See Donald Macleod’s helpful insights in From Glory to Golgotha, 47ff.