Luke 4:1-12 (NIV) Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the
wilderness, 2 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.3 The
devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become
bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live
on bread alone.’” 5 The devil led him up to a high place and
showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And
he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been
given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you
worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It is
written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” 9 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. 10 For
it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you
carefully; 11 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you
will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 12 Jesus answered,
“It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
In three different ways the devil tried to lure
Jesus away from His mission and purpose in life. The first was the temptation
that challenged the basic instinct of survival and the temptation to take care
of His needs without any trust in God. The second temptation met the dream
Jesus had for His life, the Kingdom of God. And the third was spiritual
temptation, the one that wears away our faith in God until it just isn’t that
important anymore, and we don’t know why and we don’t really care. Like the
draining of our dreams, this temptation is almost impossible to detect until we
are awakened from our spiritual slumber.
Do you get the feel for the temptations to 1) let
the pressing, basic need of our life crowd out our trust in God; 2) to let God’s
plan and purpose somehow get derailed; and, 3) to get to that point where the
inspiration is gone and our faith seems old and warmed over? If we see the
temptations, we also see how to deal with them. Jesus resisted temptation with
the Scripture. Three times He is tempted. Three times He quotes Deuteronomy. If
we are being tempted by a power greater than ourselves, we also need a power
greater than ourselves to resist, and the empirical evidence is that millions
of people in countless centuries and from every culture and walk of life have
found that power in the Scripture. Can the same be said for you and me? Has it
given us the security to deal with our basic need in trust? Has it helped us in
the fulfillment of our dreams, even if we have to revise those dreams? Has it
been a source of renewing inspiration to our life? We need the Scripture to
resist and refute temptation.
But, if you have read carefully, you have also
heard the devil quote Scripture. The big question is How do we use scripture like Jesus and not like the devil? Part of
the answer is that we read Scripture in the spirit of Jesus. We bring what we know
of Jesus and look for more. Jesus is the standard by which we understand
Scripture and use Scripture and are empowered by Scripture.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 5,
1995
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)
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