Well tonight we continue our series in the book of Luke. We come to Luke chapter 3 verse 23. You can find that on page 859 in the pew Bibles. And before we read our passage tonight, I want to address a major emphasis of this gospel that really has not received as much attention in our study of Luke so far, and that is the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.
A few years ago, the school hosted a father/son breakfast in the cafeteria and the speaker began with a reference to the great commission from Matthew chapter 28. And he said, “Jesus told His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations and baptize them…yada, yada, yada,” and I thought, “You can’t yada, yada the Trinity! You can’t yada, yada, yada the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is the crucial part of the great commission!” Well we, likewise, don’t want to overlook the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the opening chapters of Luke’s gospel because the Holy Spirit is indispensably involved in every aspect of Jesus’ life, not only in the events leading up to His birth, but also at every stage of His ministry. That includes His ministry 2,000 years ago in Galilee and Judea and Samaria, but it includes His ministry today, to us, to His people who trust in Him around the world; the ministry of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
And here in Luke’s gospel, the Holy Spirit is everywhere, inaugurating this new stage of God’s plan of salvation. And it is now, as we come to this passage, as Jesus is beginning His ministry, His earthly ministry, it is the Holy Spirit who is equipping and empowering Jesus to accomplish and to carry out His appointed task. And so we’ll find in this passage tonight that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit and He is led into the wilderness and there He is tempted by the devil. And when that temptation has ended, He goes out in the power of the Holy Spirit, returns to Galilee, and teaches in their synagogues and it is there that He is glorified by all. It’s the Holy Spirit that is carrying Him through this temptation and into His ministry into the surrounding areas. We tend to overlook or maybe under-appreciate the role of the Holy Spirit, but Jesus’ life is life in the Spirit, and that’s true for us as well. The Christian life is life in the Spirit. So we want to go to God tonight before we read this passage and ask Him that the Holy Spirit would open our eyes and make our hearts ready to receive what He has to teach to us tonight. So let’s go to God in prayer before we read.
Our Father, we give You thanks for Your Word. We praise You for this occasion to gather before You in Word and in sacrament, that You would teach us through the gospel of Luke the good news about Jesus Christ; that You would display for us in the bread and the cup the good news of Jesus Christ. He is our perfect and sufficient Savior, and would You show us again tonight the blessing of a life that is lived by faith in Christ. Would You bless us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help us to hear and to understand and to apply and to live out this Gospel in our own lives. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Luke chapter 3, verse 23:
“Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’’ And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,
‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’’
And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him,
‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’
and
‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’’
And Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’’ And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Jesus prevailed, at least for now. Chapter 4 verses 1 and 2 says that “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days being tempted by the devil.” And then when the devil had ended those temptations, verses 14 and 15 says that “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.” In this passage, Jesus overcomes the attacks of the devil, and this conflict that we see in these verses is a conflict that goes back to the very beginning of time. It’s the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It’s the struggle between Satan and those who are made in God’s image. And these verses connect Jesus back to that story. It connects Jesus back to the very beginning. It takes us all the way back to Adam, both with this genealogy and in the temptation that we find in this passage.
Jesus’ genealogy starts with Him being the son as was supposed of Joseph, in chapter 3 verse 23. Then it traces back seventy-five names all the way back to Adam in chapter 3 verse 38. And you may know that there are several differences that we find between this genealogy and the genealogy that is listed in Matthew’s gospel. Some think that Matthew may be including the royal line from David to Jesus while Luke is presenting to us the biological line of Jesus. Others have thought that Matthew has Joseph’s line, while Luke contains Mary’s family tree. We don’t know for certain. There’s no way we can know for certain how to reconcile the differences between those two genealogies. We do know that the Jews kept careful records of their family histories. And we also know that Jesus’ birth is unique from all of the births that ever existed throughout the history of the world. So one would almost expect to not understand everything about how to reconcile these two genealogies.
I like what Ralph Davis says. It’s that, “We should assume our ignorance in these difficulties rather than assuming Luke’s ignorance in these difficulties,” because Luke is a careful historian and he is writing these things down. And the point clearly in including this genealogy of Jesus at this point in His gospel, is to show us that Jesus is the son of Adam; that Jesus is included in this long list of names of men who go back to the very first man. And then we find that, like Adam, Jesus undergoes a time of testing, a time of temptation from the devil. These verses are an echo back to Genesis chapter 3, and there are several clear parallels that we find in this temptation that we find with Adam and Eve’s temptation back in Genesis chapter 3.
And while there are clear parallels to find there, there are also several significant differences because Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden; they were tempted in a perfect world when they had everything that they needed. But it wasn’t the same way for Jesus because Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. He was tempted in a fallen world. He was tempted when He was all alone and He was hungry. Verse 2 says that He had been in the wilderness for forty days and He ate nothing during those days, fasting for forty days. Fasting for forty days would have put the body under a tremendous amount of stress. Along with that sort of deprivation would have come sleeplessness and the loss of weight and the breakdown of muscle. Think about how badly Jesus would have wanted to put something, anything into His mouth to relieve His hunger. But He did not go there. And the weakness that Jesus knows at this point is a weakness that Adam would not have known at the point of His temptation. And Adam and Eve were tempted once. They were tempted once by the serpent to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we find in this passage that Jesus is tempted three times. Three times the devil goes after Jesus to try to lead Him astray. He has to resist and then resist and then resist again. And this is all for someone who did not have a fallen and sinful nature. Jesus would have felt the intensity and the shock of temptation in a way that we could never experience. In fact, we could say that He would have felt the shock and the intensity of temptation in a way that not even Adam would have experienced. Even Adam, in his sinless state, was not like Jesus, because Jesus is fully God and fully man. There would have been an intensity to this temptation as it comes to Jesus. And yet the devil saw this time as an opportune time to tempt Jesus.
If you remember back to what we studied last week, Jesus had just heard at His baptism the divine affirmation – “You are My beloved Son. With You I am well pleased.” He had been assured by His Father that He was the Son of God and that God was well pleased with Him. But it didn’t seem like it. It didn’t seem like it to Jesus. All appearances seemed to contradict that word from the Father because He was experiencing the frailties, the extreme frailties of His humanity. And He was about to set off on His mission as the Messiah; a period of His life that would include hostility and rejection and betrayal. A period of His life that would end with His death and of His drinking the cup of God’s wrath to the full. How do those things go together? How could the sonship of Jesus go together with the suffering of Jesus? How do you reconcile those things? And so that’s where the devil pressed Him. The devil pressed Him right there, in the turbulence of His circumstances and the outlook that was before Him. And he pressed Him there in the challenge of living by faith and not by sight. “If you are the Son of God,” he says to Him. “If that’s really true, then prove it.”
You see what the devil is doing there. He’s doing the same thing with that little word, “if,” that same thing that he has done since the beginning of time, and that is casting doubt on the goodness of God and on the word of God. “Did God really say?” the serpent said to Eve in the garden. “Can you really trust God’s word? Does He care?” That’s what he did to Adam and Eve in the garden. That’s what he’s doing right here; the very same thing. The devil is trying to make Jesus doubt what God had said to Him at His baptism. He’s trying to make Jesus doubt the goodness of God’s plan for Him. He’s trying to make Jesus grasp at instant gratification and to find satisfaction on worldly terms, earthly terms, rather than trusting and following the will of God for Him. “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. If you will worship me, then all authority and all power and all glory of the kingdoms of this world will be yours. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down and the angels will bear you up.” Three times he tempts Jesus in this way.
But three times, Jesus resists the devil. Three times, He refuses to yield. And He fights temptation with the Word of God; the very Word that the devil was challenging. “It is written,” verse 4, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” “It is written,” verse 8, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’” “It is said,” verse 13, “‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” In His temptation, Jesus trusts the Word of God and He serves God with all of His heart, soul, mind and strength, and He will rest in God’s power and in God’s will for His life.
And so it was over. The temptation was over for now. Verse 13 says, “When the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.” “Here at the outset of His ministry,” writes Martin Luther, “Here at the outset of His ministry, our Savior is summoning the prince of hell onto the field of battle and giving him notice of his eventual downfall.” And what we find here is that where Adam failed, Jesus prevails. And where Adam succumbed to Satan’s temptation and plunged all of humanity into the curse of sin, Jesus stands as the only man, He’s the only man in that list in the genealogy at the end of chapter 3, He’s the only man in the history of the world who stands before God as righteous and blameless, who has not fallen into temptation. And so Jesus secures victory in this encounter with the devil. But the devil will tempt Him again and there will be other times during Jesus’ ministry that He will be faced with temptation. You remember when Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” that the very next moment he also said, “Forbid it that you should go to your death.” And what did Jesus say to him? “Get behind Me, Satan!”
And we find that Jesus was tempted again in the Garden of Gethsemane and at His arrest and His trial and His rejection. He was tempted again at the cross. And it’s on the cross that Jesus is brought to the absolute limit and depth of His human frailty. It’s at the cross that it seemed like He was forsaken by His heavenly Father. It’s at the cross that Jesus died and then He was buried. The serpent had struck the fatal blow to the seed of the woman, to the Messiah. The devil had won, right? Oh no. Oh no, not at all, because it was on the cross and it was through His death and by His resurrection that Jesus crushes the head of the serpent. And He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel. And the main point of this passage that we read tonight is that Jesus is the second Adam. He is the new and the better Adam. He was tempted in every respect, just as Adam was. “He was tempted in every respect just as we are, yet without sin.” And He did all of this, all of this frailty and temptation and suffering and death, He did all of that out of His love for His people in an unbelievable act of sacrifice. He did all of that to take the curse, to take the curse that Adam’s sin deserved. To take the curse that our sin deserves. He did that so that we might be forgiven, that we may be made right with God; that we may be made right with God not on our own account, not on our own record, but on the account of His righteousness, His righteousness that is ours by faith and by faith alone.
That’s why we come to this table tonight. That’s why we come to break the bread and drink the cup, because the flesh and the blood of the second Adam, of Jesus Christ, was our substitute. He took the curse that we deserve. He took death. He took the wrath of God. And in His victory over sin and death, by His resurrection, we receive the blessings that He deserves. We receive the blessings that Jesus and Jesus alone deserves – eternal life, fellowship with God, righteousness and peace and joy in the kingdom of God forever. “Did we in our own strength confide? Our striving would be losing, were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing. Dost ask who that may be. Christ Jesus it is He! Lord Sabaoth His name, from age to age the same, and He must win the battle.” He must win the battle. We will all face temptation. We face temptation all of the time. There is almost no time that is not an opportune time for us to be tempted. It comes to us when we are in the midst of busyness and stress but also in the midst of ease and leisure. We face temptation when we are bearing burdens and going through difficult trials, but also when we are in a time of pleasure and satisfaction and prosperity. What Peter writes to us, he says that, “Your adversary the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” But the good news of this passage and the good news of this table is that our hope, our salvation, they do not rest on our obedience. They do not rest on our success in temptation. No, Jesus is the right man who is on our side and He must win the battle. In fact, He has won the battle.
You see, this passage is not primarily not about us. It’s primarily not a step-by-step way to resist temptation, although that’s there and we’ll see that. This passage is about Jesus. It’s that we would see who He is and why He came, why He is our Savior. This passage is calling us to see Jesus in all of His power and His righteousness and His goodness and His glory and calling us to trust in Him. He is the Savior we need. He is the one we need to trust and to rest upon. Look to Jesus in faith tonight. Trust in Him as our substitute, the second and better Adam; the one who stands in our place and bears the wrath of God, who bears the curse that we deserve and gives to us His life and righteousness before God. Look to Jesus tonight.
But there’s another thing we need to see about this passage. And the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 2, he says that “Jesus partook of flesh and blood, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, namely, the devil.” And that He had to be made like us in every respect so that He might become the merciful and faithful High Priest that we need. And then he says in verse 18 that, “because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” That is because Jesus was tempted and He overcame temptation, therefore He is able to help us when we are tempted. How does Jesus help us in temptation? Well there are four ways. We’ll look at that very briefly.
And the first is this – Jesus is not indifferent to temptation. Temptation is to be resisted. It’s to be fought against. And we all face temptations of one sort or another. John, in 1 John, calls them “the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.” The Puritans said that, “The world’s trinity is pleasure, beauty and honor.” And those things are pulling us towards them all the time. And you know the temptations that you are facing tonight. You know the temptations that weigh heavily upon you in your lives right now. It could be as basic as wanting to watch a football game, or it could be something that could actually wreck your life. We must fight temptation. We must curb our desires and deny ourselves when our sinful desires crop up in our lives.
And number two, we fight, but we fight from a place of victory. Jesus has defeated Satan. The devil is a defeated devil. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” “There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” We fight temptation from a place of security, of safety, of freedom. Nothing can unsettle us from God’s love. Nothing can rip us out of the hands of our Good Shepherd. And we know that because the victory is secure, that one day we will not have to fight temptation any more. The fight only goes along for a while, for a time. That one day, all the effects of sin, all the effects of temptation will be gone and they will be gone forever. And so we press on, we persevere, we keep on going in this life by God’s grace to resist and to fight against temptation.
And we do that knowing, number three, that Jesus sympathizes with us in our temptation. We don’t fight alone. We’re not on our own in the fight against temptation. Jesus knows the struggle. He knows the struggle that you face. He knows the struggle that we face. We can go to Him for help. We can go to Him in openness and honesty, in confession, in repentance, bearing our burdens before Him, bearing our temptations before Him, bearing our sin before Him. And we can know that because He sympathizes with us in our temptations that Jesus is also right now interceding for us on our behalf at the right hand of God to help us and to provide the strength that we need in resisting and fighting temptations.
And then the four thing is, look to the example that Jesus provides us in this passage. Look to the example of Jesus in fighting temptation. He is the true Man and Jesus relies on the Holy Spirit. He fights temptation in the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not resist on our own strength, but we resist in the strength of the Holy Spirit. We resist and fight against temptation with the same power that was at work to bring Jesus to life and to bring Him back to life from the dead. That same power is at work in us in the person of the Holy Spirit in the work of sanctification. Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit. We must rely on the Holy Spirit. And Jesus fasts and He prays. We’re not told explicitly that He prays in this passage, but by His fasting it is implied that He was also in a time of prayer and we see throughout Jesus’ life that that was the pattern of His life – to withdraw and to spend time alone in fellowship and prayer. Jesus fasts and He prays. And He’s in this posture of dependence and in submission to God’s will and God’s plan for His life. He is in a reliance upon the grace of God for His help in prayer and even in fasting.
How often do we do that? In our battle and struggle against temptation and sin, how often do we fast? Maybe not forty days; I won’t recommend that for us. But to fast and to give up our own earthly needs and our physical needs in order to seek above and beyond that God’s will and God’s desire for our life. It’s an expression of giving up in order to seek and to pursue God’s will. Prayer and fasting.
And then finally there’s Scripture. There’s God’s Word. Jesus relies upon the Word of God. “I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” And the Word is the sword of the Spirit that is fighting against temptation. The Holy Spirit, fasting, prayer, God’s Word – these are the means of grace, the means of God’s grace to help us put sin to death in our lives and to grow and to mold and to shape us into the image and likeness of our Savior, Jesus. Jesus is so good to us. He’s so good. He is a complete and a perfect Savior. And not only has He accomplished our salvation and delivered us from the consequences of sin and of death, but He also helps us with our daily battle against sin and temptation. And He’s also given us this Table. He’s given us the Word and He’s given us the Lord’s Supper so that we might hear the good news of salvation preached to us, but that we might have it displayed before us as well. This Table is here before us tonight to mold us and to shape us into the likeness of Christ. So let’s turn there now in faith and taste and see that the Lord is good.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come before You and confess that we are broken and sinful people and we are unworthy of Your love and Your mercy. We are unworthy of Your blessing. And so we come before You not in our own worthiness, not in our own merit, but we come before You in the merit and the record of Jesus Christ our Savior. Thank You for His victory. Thank You for His defeat of sin and death and Satan and temptation and for the security that we have to come before You in joy and peace and righteousness. Would You be with us now as we continue to worship through the ministry of the Lord’s Supper. Would You make these elements effective and fruitful in our lives as we would serve You with joy and delight. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.