Luke 4:1-13 – If you don’t have a Bible near by, you can read it here.

https://netbible.org/bible/Luke+4

This passage begins with an interesting statement: Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit left the place he had been and went into the wilderness.  If I’m completely honest, this is a strange thought for me.  I don’t pretend to understand it fully.  But I also don’t want to rush by because I think we can make some observations about Jesus’ earthly life that have important consequences for our lives. In the last passage we made some observations about the deity of Jesus.  Today we need to notice something about his humanity.  You may or may not be aware that the Bible teaches that Jesus is fully God AND fully human.  In his life on earth we are told he “emptied himself” and took on human form.  And it wasn’t simply that he looked human.  He was human.  We are told that he is able to identify with us in all of our struggles because he has experienced them just like we have.  As we read the accounts of his life, one of the things that is so incredibly impressive is that he was fully human but never sinned.  He lived a perfect life, and he wasn’t able to do that because he had some special God super-power that helped him.  He walked through life on this earth with all of the temptations and aggravations that you and I face, and he didn’t sin.  That was remarkable because he didn’t have any advantage from being God that enabled him to be sinless. He was fully human, and he didn’t sin.  

I hope I have been clear in the past, but I’m going to say this again. I am not a brilliant, extremely well-educated theologian.  I have studied and do study the Bible.  I have learned from some very wise and well-educated believers, but I am very, very fallible.  I regularly pray that God will keep me from error as I write and teach, but please keep reading the Bible for yourself.  I am reading the Bible with you and sharing what I believe to be true based on what I have learned as I relate this passage to the Bible as a whole.  I might not have this quite entirely right.  So let me humbly share with you something I believe we can understand about Jesus’ life on earth.   Feel free to explain to me what I am getting wrong, I’m listening.

Jesus was fully God and fully human.  So as God he knew everything, he had power to do anything that was logically possible.  Every capacity that being God contains, Jesus had.  But I believe that he chose not to use that power.  He chose to have the same limitations that you and I have.  So he didn’t know everything.  He couldn’t just heal someone or turn water into wine, unless he laid claim to that power through the Holy Spirit.  In the same way that you and I, if you are a follower of Jesus, have the Holy Spirit living in us and have access to his power, Jesus had access to that power.  Let me explain why I believe this is the case.  Throughout the gospels we hear Jesus healing in the power of the Spirit and Jesus even says that he does nothing apart from the father’s will. There is a passage we will look at later in this story where Jesus is teaching a group of people and we are told the power of the Lord was present for Jesus to heal the sick.  If he always had that power, that would be a strange thing for Luke to tell us.  I think, and I’m not certain of this, but it seems to me that Jesus healed people and even had wisdom about people’s hearts and coming events because he was in such close relationship with his Father through the Holy Spirit that he used the power and authority of the Father, rather than his own.  Don’t get me wrong.  Jesus had that power, but he seems to have willingly distanced himself from it.  There are people who think the newborn Jesus had all knowledge and power.  So, if you will, he was lying in the manger knowing the hearts and thoughts of everyone around him.  If that were true, would he truly have experienced being human?

Why I think this is true and also has ramifications for those who are followers of Jesus is that, not only can he understand what it is to be human (so he has true empathy for us in our weaknesses) but he demonstrates the way in which the Holy Spirit can empower a human.  Of course, Jesus was sinless. You and I are not.  Because Jesus was sinless, he had perfect, unhindered relationship with the Father and the Spirit so, even without abandoning the self-imposed limitations of his humanness, he could know people’s hearts and heal people’s bodies as the Spirit directed and empowered him.  You and I have sinned, so our relationship with the Father is imperfect, but we also have access to the power and wisdom of God through the Spirit.  As we become more and more like Jesus, as we allow him to do the work of making us more holy, more pure, our access to the power and wisdom of the Spirit of God also becomes more and more like that of Jesus.

That is my understanding of a really complex topic.  As we go on I think we will find more reasons to believe this.  If I’m misunderstanding it, I hope that will also become more clear as we go along.

So the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the desert to be tempted for 40 days. What was this about?  What was the value in going through temptation at this point in his life?  I’m not sure what all was on God’s heart when he planned it, but I have a couple of ideas.  If you have read this story before, you will know that Jesus is about to start a very public ministry.  Without recounting painful story upon story, I will simply note that public ministry has a way of bringing temptations to people, and many people in public ministry don’t handle temptation well.  Perhaps this was a training ground.  Perhaps it was a way for Jesus to face the greatest temptations that life offers so that he could honestly say, he was tempted in every way and didn’t sin.  Maybe it legitimized his claim that he knew what we were going through and he went ahead of us, setting an example for us to follow.  

What I do know is that the devil tempted him with three things that plague just about everyone. Hunger, influence and authority, and trusting God. 

Hunger is pretty basic. We all feel it and when we get an opportunity to fill it, we usually take it. Especially after 40 days with nothing to eat. But influence and authority are even more compelling. What if I could just make people like me (or my kid listen to me)? What if I could just be in charge and I didn’t have to argue my position on things? What if I could just have my way when I want it? So ya, that’s tempting. But the last one is really interesting to me. 

He basically says, The Bible says, “God will take care of you and protect you. You should test that theory to see if it’s true.” And Jesus says, “God said it. I don’t check to see if he means it. I know that what God says is true and reliable”

And Satan knew in that moment he was cooked. Jesus knew who he was and who his father was, and Satan had no shot at making him less. But even then it says he left him until an opportune time. Satan never gave up trying to destroy the son! He never gave up his temptations. Why would I expect him to ease up on mine? I need to find my confidence in my God so that the temptations that never stop coming will just not be an issue for me.