"The Messiah Tested"

Have any of you seen any of the six Jurassic Park movies? If you have, you’ve helped contribute to the over $6 billion in total earnings for the franchise. I got to thinking about Jurassic Park and was reminded that the original was released in 1993. And it occured to me that I’ve reached the age that, in my mind, 1993 feels like just ten or fifteen years ago, but turns out, it’s been thirty years! Now, I realize part of y’all understand what I mean and are thinking, “welcome to the club!” and another part of y’all are clueless and all I can say is, “it’ll make sense one day.”

I bring up the Jurassic Park franchise to tell you about a scene from the original movie. As the movie opens, it begins to fill in details about how this theme park filled with real-life dinosaurs comes to be after the amazing discovery of an amber stone that preserved a mosquito whose belly was apparently filled with some dino blood. After sprinkling in some super smart geneticists, from one scene to the next we’ve got a dozen different kinds of ferocious dinosaurs roaming the planet again.

Before opening the park to the general public, the people who are making the theme park bring in the top dinosaur people in the world to tour it and to ask them to legitimize it with their expert approval. So they fly these people in and we have these memorable scenes of humans laying eye on these once extinct creatures from long ago. The gnarliest of them all is a dinosaur that I am confident most people didn’t know existed before 1993, which is the velociraptor. The movie bills the raptor as the most athletic and most intelligent and most lethal of all the dinosaurs and as the breed is introduced to the audience, we find that they’re not roaming freely like the tyrannosaurus rex or the brontosaurus or the stegosaurus, but rather, the raptors are confined to a prison for dinos whose perimeter fence and overhead cage is a tensile wire grid that is electrified with high voltage. And to add to the mystery and danger, the raptor expert is a Kenyan man with a British accent, who explains that the sound of electrical shocks in the background is because the raptors are frequently testing the perimeter fences for weaknesses, looking for any vulnerability, looking for any way to get through.

Tension

My friend, are you aware that there is more to this world than just you and your concerns and priorities in it? I suspect that you will spend this afternoon fulfilling your commitments. Some of you will run off to baseball or softball or soccer fields. Some of you will run home. Some of you will run to San Antonio. You’ll spend your time this afternoon focusing on what you have prioritized and then your mind will probably begin to shift to the week’s worth of obligations. You may prepare meals for the week. You may review your calendar and start triaging your tasks. Or you may pretend that Monday isn’t coming until it does and you’re forced against your will to be a big boy or girl. You live and think that it’s just you, your family, your work, your school, your obligations, and that’s it…you are completely unaware of the fact that there is a spiritual realm to God’s creation and I’ve got news for ya...not all the forces at play are good. No, the forces at play are led by an adversary who is seeking to lure you in, to knock you off, to ruin you by testing your perimeter fences just like the raptors in their paddock at Jurassic Park.

Our aim today isn’t to prove that there is a devil as Peter describes that 1 Peter 5:8 “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” The Word of God that I’ve read for you makes it clear that there is an adversary who stands opposed to God, to God’s purposes, and to God’s people.

Our aim today is to answer the question... what defense is there from the enemy’s attacks?

Truth

This is a vitally important question that as we seek to properly answer it, will challenge you and I this morning. Now, it will be less challenging for those of you who have never read this passage before and are just trying to make sense of the devil and Jesus going toe-to-toe. It will be more challenging for those who are like me and know this to be a very familiar passage of Scripture that has been often preached, taught, and cited in our past. Let me tell you: familiarity is a dangerous thing. Familiarity breeds disrespect. An example of what I am talking I’m talking about with familiarity is the fact that most car accidents occur within a few miles of a driver’s home. Why is that, you wonder? It’s because the driver feels more relaxed because they’re on their home turf. Their respect for the responsibility of driving diminishes. They can let their hair down, if they have any to let down. They can start to check those text messages and clear the notifications on social media. They know the way to and from home like the back of their hand…could probably even drive it blind-folded…and that faulty self-confidence leads a driver to be more vulnerable to mistake. Familiarity is a dangerous thing. Familiarity is very dangerous, especially when it comes to God and the things of God.

It would be a dangerous thing right now to check out because you’re familiar with this passage, you’ve been around the Christian block, and you assume that you already know where God’s leading us this morning. You’re about to check out because I’ve opened our time with this passage in a familiar way that other preachers have, raising concern about the attacks of the devil, and your familiarity with this will lead you to believe that we’re walking down a familiar path.

The Trees

Let me tell you about that familiar path.

That familiar path has three legs to it, the first of which begins to express the defense that you and I need against the devil from the example that we find that Jesus is setting for us here.

We begin by talking about how this passage in Luke 4 opens after a significant spiritual event in the life of Jesus, that being his baptism in the Jordan River administered by his cousin John. There’s a moment of great transcendence where we discover one of the few times in Scripture where there is a manifestation of the Trinity.

The Son of God being baptized to identify himself with those he has been sent to redeem.

The Spirit of God descending upon the Son.

The Father expressing his verbal pleasure in the Son’s progress towards God’s plan of redemption and reconciliation.

And so we often bring to our attention that when we encounter moments of great spiritual significance like the day of our salvation, or the day of our baptism, or the day of some marked growth in the Lord, that immediately following there’s probably going to be some attack or temptation by the devil. So we look to the example of Jesus and we see that in the midst of a forty day fast, the devil tempts Jesus to demonstrate his power by turning a stone into bread to satisfy his physical need for food.

And if we’ve ever been in a Bible study with a heaping bowl of tortilla chips right in front of us, no one is really thinking with a grumbling tummy, so we choose to chase every rabbit trail about the subject of fasting. Fasting sounds mysterious and something that the spiritual elite do, so we first explore whether it is commanded in the Bible. Depending on where we wind up on that question, we deliberate about how long a proper fast is and what are we allowed to have for the fast to still count? Of course, that last question comes from the fact that we’re so hocked up on Starbucks that we need to know if our fix of caffeine is going to mess the whole thing up. And someone eventually plays the parental role by cautioning everyone to check with their doctors before fasting, mostly because of the sue-happy world we live in. Wouldn’t want any blame to come back our way, right? And these types of questions go on until the Bible study leader realizes that half of the group has become disinterested and attempts to bring the conversation back to the example of Jesus by calling attention to the fact that in the face of temptation, Jesus quotes Scripture and the leader then takes a few minutes speaking to the fulfillment that he or she finds in the Word of God. So everyone jots two things down in margin of their Bible or their journal:

I need to love the Bible more.

I should probably try to memorize some verses of the Bible.

Then the trip down that path picks back up and the sermon or lesson or conversation moves on to the second leg. After stifling the devil’s first temptation, we see the example from Jesus of a temptation that so many of us can trip up on. The devil leads Jesus up to some grand high point where they could overlook all the kingdoms of the world and in effect says, “you know, you can skip out on all that suffering and dying and I can give you the world right now. That’s what the Father sent you for anyway, right? For you to win the world? Man, I can gift wrap it for you. You just gotta acknowledge me…to submit to me…to worship me...” And eyes open wide with the thought of Jesus potentially doing that and we find relief when faithful Jesus, yet again, quotes the Bible back to the devil from memory.

And since we already have a note in our margins about memorizing verses, we put a star or tick mark out on the side of it to reinforce that this is something we really need to start doing. And maybe we start to talk about the dangers of pursuing notoriety, fame, and power in our lives, particularly after the eye-opening moment of awareness that those things don’t always come from God, but they can come from the devil. So we jot down in our margins that we need to check our heart and question our motivation behind why we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing. We think about the places we serve in church or what we are working for in our careers or even how we manage our social media presence and we fall under conviction that maybe we haven’t been living humbly enough.

Then the trip moves down to the final leg of the path and we pick up where now see the example where Jesus is led by the devil to the pinnacle of the place of worship in Jewish life. This last temptation calls for Jesus to demonstrate before everyone there that he is God’s Messiah by forcing God’s hand of protection upon him to preserve his life. This time, the devil ups his game and quotes Scripture to Jesus to just up the ante a bit, but Jesus doesn’t succumb to that temptation. He overcomes it by properly quoting the Bible about how no one is to put God to test. And then the preacher, winding up his sermon, calls everyone to trust in God, to never dare question or test him, based on the example of Jesus. And so we add one more star in our margin next to the note about memorizing verses and add a new note about having more faith.

The Obscured Forest

If you’ve assumed I’d take you down that path, you’d be wrong. Now, I’ve had to speak to that path because I needed everyone to see how a forest can be missed for the trees. You ever heard that saying before…missing the forest for the trees? It’s an expression that means that by only focusing on a few parts, you and I can lose a sense of appreciation for what’s happening on the whole. Far too often we approach the Word of God with familiarity and we focus on a few parts and we miss the grand sweep of it all. And I’ve got to tell you, what I’m talking about right now, is why some churches are breaking apart over the question of sexuality. It’s why, if you’ve been reading the responses to the Church Health Survey we conducted a few months ago, so many can say that in worship they feel the presence of God and yet there is disagreement about the style of music.

For far too long, a passage like the one we’re considering this morning has been preached and taught and discussed and we look at the Jesus here only as an example. In other words, we take from this Word of God that we just need to be more like Jesus. We just need to fast more, memorize more, be humbled more, and so on and so forth so that when we approach the Bible and open it to Luke 4:1-13, we can just as easily say “And Dan (fill in any first name), full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit...” as what it actually says: Luke 4:1 “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.”

We read the Bible anthropocentrically and not christocentrically. Said another way, we look first for our place in the Bible and we do not look for what the Bible says about Jesus. We do this because we look out for ourselves and our interests first. This is a core issue of sin in each of our hearts. And if you think I’m amiss, tell me, when you’re at some family gathering and you’re flipping through pictures from the past, who is it that you’re looking for first in those pictures? Be honest, whose face is it that you’re looking for first? Your own, every time. And my friends, this is to our detriment. This is the very reason why humanity is in the predicament that it’s in. This is why we have to train ourselves to read the Bible with the aim of answering, “What does this say about Jesus?”

Because if we approached this passage differently, with a proper focus, we begin to take in the forest for the whole here. Let’s start with that note we’ve made for ourselves in the margins of our Bibles…that note about the need to memorize Scripture. Yes, with each temptation, Jesus quotes Scripture, but as we saw in the third temptation, the devil can do that just as easily. What is more important is to ask what Scripture it is that Jesus is quoting as well as asking, why is he quoting this?

If we began to answer those questions, you will find that each of Jesus’s answers to the temptations of the devil is a quotation from the Book of Deuteronomy. I will tell you that the word ‘deuteronomy’ means “the second law”, in other words, the book is a re-statement of God’s law given through Moses. It is the law which God gave for man to live by. So in quoting from this book, Jesus is saying to that devil of hell, “You are saying that feeding my body matters more than obeying God, but God has told men and women that they shall not live by bread alone, so I won’t live by bread alone.” He tells the devil, “You offer me power over all at the cost of worshipping you, but God has told men and women that they should not worship anyone or anything but him, so I won’t do anything but that.” He tells the devil, “You suggest that I should test the promises of God to suit me, but God has said that men and women should not test him in this way, and because God said it, I will obey.”

What is Jesus doing? He is deliberately emptying himself of his power and glory by putting himself in the position of a man. A man who is under the authority of the Word of God. That’s what Paul is teaching when he records Philippians 2:8 “and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient...” What is Jesus doing? Jesus is going right back to the beginning of the Bible, right back to square one: Jesus is the new Adam.

You remember Adam, don’t you? The first man, set in the garden of Eden by God. Adam, in Eden, who enjoyed the fruit of the garden that was watered by a river that ran through it. Adam, who was even given a companion in Eve, the woman he would say is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. Adam, who was the head of the human race, who chose to disobey God when the tempter came. Adam, who denied the adequacy of all that the garden provided to include the very presence of God. Think about the dreadfulness of this. Adam knew the presence of God in a way that no one else can know until Jesus returns to make everything new. In his disobedience, Adam caused the whole of mankind to start off on the wrong track, the track of sin and death. My friends, we cannot do enough of anything to get off that track. There is no self-help book or ten steps to something better here. We have to look beyond ourselves for help, we have to look to Jesus.

And so Luke presents to us Jesus, the second Adam, the better Adam. Jesus is alone and is led by the Holy Spirit to a land that is barren to be confronted by the tempter. Yet the outcome of the devil’s interaction with this Adam will not be like the first. This second Adam, this Jesus, will not fall to temptation. Jesus will not fall to sin. Jesus will win. Jesus will be the totally obedient Man. Jesus will be Man as man was meant to be. Jesus will be Man who is altogether righteous. Jesus will be man who never loses his relationship with God because of sin. Jesus can disarm and defeat and overcome the devil because of his undeviating obedience to the will of God. An obedience that the Bible says is an “obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Application

That makes Jesus altogether different, friends. Jesus is different than Adam. Jesus is different than you and me. Jesus is God’s Image and God’s Wisdom and God’s Mystery. Jesus is the King of all. Jesus is the King of fresh starts!

And we’re just at the beginning of what God is telling us through Luke about Jesus, the Son of God, the King of all and Savior of souls. This testing of Jesus comes at the start of his ministry and the final crucial conflict still awaits him. The devil withdraws from the wilderness looking forward to an opportune time. For the devil, the writing is on the wall… When tempted, Jesus did not falter like Adam. Jesus will never falter because Jesus is God. And God himself is who goes to and through a terrible, bloody cross not so he can be your example, but so God can be Savior to whomsoever would call upon the name of Jesus.

Inspiration

I suggested that our aim was to answer where you and I can find defense against the enemy’s attacks… Our defense is the instrument that God used to defeat the power of evil and death. Our defense is the cross of our King.

My friend, have you come to see that you give in to temptation far more than you’d care to admit? Are you overwhelmed with the weight of your sin? Let me tell you, since Jesus is the better Adam, the second Adam, Jesus is the King of fresh starts. In Jesus, humanity can begin to see what we might be when we are in Christ. In Jesus, we can begin to see what will come to be when Jesus comes to set all things right and make all things new.

Do not think for a moment that you cannot come to the cross of Jesus Christ and find protection, healing, and restoration. We sing a song around here that’s called “Room at the Cross,” which opens with this:

The cross upon which Jesus died, is a shelter in which we can hide;

And its grace so free is sufficient for me, and deep is its foundation as wide as the sea.

Action

My friends, take shelter in no place other than the cross of the King of fresh starts, King Jesus. Defense against the attacks of the accuser and tempter is only found in that cross.

And if you agree that far too often we have fallen to looking for ourselves in Scripture rather than looking for Jesus and what Scripture tells us about him, then you already know what you need to change when you read the Bible. And if we’re not looking for the very reason why God has given his Word, the Bible to us, which is to know the Savior of the world whose name is Jesus, then we’ve also have got to confess and repent of the so many ways we prioritize ourselves over Jesus and his kingdom when we gather as a church family.

Today is a day we call a fifth Sunday jubilee. It’s a day we intentionally set aside to gather as God’s people for fellowship and worship and rest. Let me leave a question for you to consider. This can be something you refer to for discussion at your lunch or supper table today. It should be something that you take to prayer. Please don’t try to qualify the question. Please don’t try to explore nuances or exceptions or what have you.