Luke's Gospel, chapter four, verses one to 13. This is God's word. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days, And when they were over, he was hungry. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command the stone to become bread. 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, 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 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 test, you shall not put the Lord your God to test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Luke now begins the account of the active ministry of the Lord Jesus. For most of his ministry, Jesus lived and worked in the region of Galilee, not a huge region, and specifically around the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee was a pear-shaped lake of freshwater in the north of present-day Israel. It's also called the Sea of Tiberias in the Word of God. And it's also referred to the Lake Gennesaret. Log that away in your minds, because it can be confusing. When you hear that he ministered in the region of Galilee, in the Sea of Galilee, and then you hear about this Sea of Tiberias, you wonder, where on earth is that? And the Lake of Gennesaret, well, where is that? Well, they're all the same place. I also want you to note that Jesus has moved from Nazareth, which is about five or six miles west of the south point of the Sea of Galilee, and he's moved up to the northwest end of the Sea of Galilee and is now living in Capernaum. It's only about 20 miles northwest of Nazareth. So it shows you that there wasn't a great deal of mileage covered here. The Jordan was only five or six miles from Nazareth. He may have been 10 miles from where John the Baptist baptized him, but you're not talking great distances here. And that's remarkable. As I thought about that yesterday again, I thought, isn't it striking that Jesus Christ ministered in a relatively tiny geographical area in Israel. And yet his impact has gone across the entire world. A lot of work that Jesus is going to be doing, and which we're going to be reading about in the coming weeks, as I say, was in around Galilee itself. He ministered mostly in smaller towns and in rural regions. He avoided the big metropolises or the big city centers. For example, there's no references to him visiting Sepphoris. It was the former capital of Galilee. Nor did he visit the newly built city of Tiberias. It had been built by King Herod, Herod Antipas, the Hebrew king who ruled over the region by permission and appointment of the Roman authority, the man responsible for the death of John the Baptist, and a man whom Jesus, as we shall see when we come into the 13th chapter of the book of Luke, refers to as that fox. The reason why Herod had moved the capital from Sepphoris to this new city was because Sepphoris had sided with his predecessors and his enemies, so he just lifted up and went to Tiberias. But we don't read of Jesus going to these main centers of population. This morning, we're at the very beginning of this account of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in a very rural setting. In fact, it's in the wilderness a barren, dry, dusty, inhospitable place, devoid of any physical comfort and of any solace from people. It's into this very uninviting environment that Jesus now goes with one specific purpose, to engage the devil. There are three aspects of the temptation of Jesus that I want to look at first. And then I want to consider the first of the three temptations that the devil brought to Jesus. So we are not going to deal with this entire passage that I read this morning. We're not going to look at each of the temptations in turn. We're going to look first at the three aspects of the temptations in general. and then focus our attention on the first temptation in particular. The first thing I want to note about these temptations of Jesus is the manner of this encounter. We read that Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit. Matthew tells us this directly in Matthew chapter four, verse one. He says, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. So Jesus was led up the side of the valley, out of the Jordan, into the Rocky Heights to a wilderness region. And as Luke presents it, he is led by the Holy Spirit, not just to engage the devil, but he is led by the Holy Spirit during the entirety of these 40 days. Does that mean that Jesus had to be led by the Holy Spirit because he was unwilling or reluctant to enter into this engagement with the devil? Far from it. The fact is that it's actually the opposite is the case. What we see here is that Jesus is willingly accepting the decreed will of the Father that is being executed by the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus and he leads Jesus into this wilderness, Jesus voluntarily and willingly goes. There can be little doubt that Satan, to give him his personal name, would have known all about Jesus. Surely in the world of the spiritual forces that are evil, the fact of the miraculous conception by a young teenage girl called Miriam Nazareth, that would have not gone unnoticed. An eye would have been kept on the progress of this child through his teenage years into his adolescence as he grew up in Backwoods, Nazareth, working with his father. And on the day that Jesus came to the Jordan from his home in Nazareth and stands there in line with the sinners, and the water is poured over his head, and the spirit descends on him in bodily form as a dove, and the heavens open, and the voice is heard, Behold, or you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. That would not have gone unnoticed in the kingdom of Satan. He would have been intimately aware of what was happening and what was going on in the life of this man, Jesus Christ, who was to be his number one adversary. And here he is, granted by the will of God, given an opportunity to attack Jesus, to strike early, just as he had struck early in the life of Adam. And given this opportunity, Satan does not delay. Satan does not hesitate. Satan comes to the wilderness, Jesus is led into the wilderness, and this confrontation, this spiritual battle, this engagement, is ensued with both parties fully participating in it. So it's an encounter which God is up for and allows. It's an encounter which the devil relishes the opportunity to participate in. The second thing I want to note about these temptations is their nature, their nature. Jesus, unlike us, as we saw last Lord's Day morning, was born without sin. He was not the seed of man. He was born, his mother having conceived by the Holy Spirit, a wholly unique event in the history of conception. And because of this, Jesus was born with a nature that was not subject to the law of sin. He was without sin in his nature, and he was without sin in his life. Paul writes, and I quote it last Lord's Day, and I repeat it, that you may hear it, and it may drive home. 2 Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. He made him to be sin who knew no sin. And it's important, it's important that you understand this morning that Jesus was not a sinner. Because James tells us that sin plays a key and integral role in our temptation and the temptations that you and I experience. James says, when we are lured and enticed by our own sinful desires, then desire, when it conceives, gives birth to sin. So when you and I are tempted, we often say, the devil has tempted me. Well, that's not true. We're not tempted by the devil. We are tempted by the law of sin that remains within our being. And when that law of sin comes to us and we succumb to that sinful desire, that sinful desire then gives rise to further sin. That law of sin, which has no right over our lives at all, claims ownership, which it does not have the right to claim. Our bondage to sin is broken. It was destroyed by Christ at the cross, and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are no longer subject to the full power of sin. And yet, you and I succumb to temptation because we give that law of sin a place in our lives which it should not have. Do you see where I'm going with this? Jesus Christ was neither a sinner in nature, nor a sinner in thought, word, or deed. So there's no way in which these temptations of Jesus came through the avenue of the law of sin within him. For that law of sin did not exist within him, and therefore that avenue was not open to it. And so when we read about the temptations of Jesus, these temptations are temptations that come to Jesus directly by the hand of the devil. The writer to the Hebrew says that in all respects and in all manner, he was tempted like as we are. yet without sin. And many people take that to mean that he was tempted and he thwarted that temptation and he did not sin. And there's an element in that which is true. He did not sin. He did not succumb to temptation. But there's an also aspect in a sense that he was tempted in all respects as we are, yet it didn't come through the law of sin that was within him. It came to him directly by the emissaries of the Satan and by the power and the personality of Satan himself. And because of that, the temptations that Jesus faced during this 40-day period and throughout the rest of his life were of a greater magnitude than the temptations that you and I will ever face. And so when we come to God and we say to God, I am being tempted in this region, and we think, what am I to do? We come to Jesus Christ and we speak to Jesus Christ, and he says to us, well, I can identify with that temptation. And we can say to him, well, you have never experienced this temptation to the degree that I've experienced it. You have never had this to the same degree of power in my life that I have. this draw, this call to me, this insatiable call that I must succumb to it. Jesus says to us, you're only being tempted by the law of sin that's at work in your life. I was tempted directly by the emissaries and the person of the devil himself. I understand graphically and intimately the reality of what it means to be tempted. And so we can come to him and say, we know, we know that you understand. The third thing we note in general about the temptations is their duration. The temptations lasted for 40 days. And during that time, the Holy Spirit remained upon Jesus and the temptations were a constant reality. That's the reason why Jesus didn't eat during the 40 days. Many people misunderstand this. They think that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days. He starved himself for 40 days. And at the end of the 40 days, the devil come along and tempted him three times. That is not what happened. If you look at the simplicity of the passage, it tells you. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days. The Spirit was with him for 40 days. And during those 40 days, he was tempted by the devil. He was tempted by the devil's emissaries during those 40 days. He ate nothing during those 40 days. And when those 40 days were over, he because he had eaten nothing because of the consistency and the constancy of the temptations that he had received from the devil, then he was hungry. The sense of this hunger then overwhelmed him. The reality of the hunger became something that was real to him. Temptations were continuous. The hunger was something that he became acutely aware of at the end of the 40 days. And then the decree comes from God. They are over. These days are over. And it's at this point that then the devil comes to him in person and tempts him with these three recorded temptations that we have. So it wasn't just that Jesus withstood the temptations three times. There was constant, ongoing temptation, to such a degree that he did not eat. Such was the intensity and the continuous nature of the temptations. And so when he comes now to this point when it is over, And the devil appears in person to bring these three direct temptations. Jesus here has been subjected to continual and sustained temptations. And he has withheld them. He's withstood them. So this is a temptation that is led, this is an engagement that is led into by the Spirit. These temptations of Jesus are peculiar to him because he was without sin, and he did not and was not drawn to temptation by sin, and the temptations did not last on the period of one day. They endured for 40 days, during which time Jesus was sustained by the Holy Spirit. I trust that that's helpful to you this morning because often people read this passage and they don't get those fairly straightforward, but they are important points. Let's look then at the first of these three final temptations. Whilst the devil had his hand all over each of these temptations, it's now at the end of this period that he makes a personal appearance. He presents himself in a form, we're not told what it is, but it is Satan himself who comes. And Satan, always follows the same approach. He has a variety of approaches, but he always follows the same approach. There's nothing creative about Satan. He does so and he approaches Jesus in exactly the same way as he approached Eve in Genesis chapter 3 verse 1. The first thing that he does with regard to Eve is he raises doubt He says in Genesis chapter 3 verse 1, it had been, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? He raises doubt. In Luke chapter 4 verse 3, he raises doubt if you are the son of God. Now there are occasions in the word of God when the word if is used in the positive way to mean sense. In other words, Someone says to you, or I say to Heather, I'm going to the shop, would you like anything? And she says, well, if you're going to the shop, bring us back such and such. Now, it's not a question of doubting me whether I'm going to the shop. She knows I'm going to the shop. I've said I'm going to the shop. She's saying, since you're going to the shop, then bring this. That's not the way that the devil uses the word if here. It's not the way that he uses it in Genesis chapter 3. When the devil uses the word if, he never means it since. He always means it in doubt. And it's not just that he raises doubt, it's the fact that when he does so, he twists the word of God in the process In Genesis chapter 2, we read that the Lord commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. That was what God said. Satan said to Eve, did God actually say to you, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? He didn't quote God at his word. He took the word of God, he injected it with doubt, and then he twisted it. Here he says to Jesus, if you are, and I want to make a technical point here, but it's an important technical point, because it says if you are the son of God, the word the is not there in the original. Now you could use the word the there, but you could equally use the word a. So it could be translated if you are a son of God, So Satan is saying to Jesus, if you are one of those whom God set his favor on, that class of beings that God loved in a particular way, and you were chosen because you were favored, if you are such as one of these, then turn this stone into bread. Now, let's be clear, Satan is not confused here. He knew full well who it is that is standing before him. He knew who he was from the moment of his conception. He knew him as he walked about in Nazareth. He knew him during his adolescent years. He knew who he was as he stood before John the Baptist. He knew who he was when the heavens opened and God pronounced that statement, you are my beloved son. There was no ambiguity, no sense in Satan's mind that he didn't know who he was. The point was, that he was asking Jesus to distrust the Father. If you are the son of God, or if you are a son of God, then turn this stone into bread. God had brought Jesus to the point of hunger. During the 40 days, he had permitted the devil to wage war against Jesus through his cohorts. And the father had sustained Jesus physically, and now that this has ended, Jesus is feeling hungry, intensely hungry. It's like being in a highly critical situation and you get hurt and the adrenaline flows and you're able to keep going through it because the adrenaline is kicked in. And when all the difficulty and all that circumstance changes, then the adrenaline stops and you can feel completely flat. And you feel the intensity of the hurt. Well, here is Jesus being caught in a spiritual battle for 40 days with the devil in the wilderness. And he has engaged in this by the help of the Holy Spirit and by God the Father sustaining him. And now that it is over, this hunger grasps at his body with every element of power that it can. His stomach feels it, his muscles feel it, his mind feels it. Here he is. The battle has been waged with great intensity. And the impact of not eating for 40 days is now being felt upon his body. What is he going to do? Is he going to look up to the Father who has sustained him? Or is he going to look to the stones that sit around his feet? Will he trust God, the Father who loves him? and has declared that love, or will he look to his own instincts and provide for himself? Will he rise to the life-filled challenge of prove yourself to me? He is a human being here. He is a human being. Will he take the Father's words for what they mean? You are my beloved son. Will he say, yes, that's true. But at this moment in time, at this moment in time, I feel the necessity. I feel the necessity to provide for myself. I feel that necessity. I know you love me. I know you love me. But the reality is at this moment in time, I need to look to my own resources. I need food. These stones are here. I can turn these stones into bread. And I can fill my stomach. You have led me into this battle. I have engaged in this battle. I have overcome the enemy. I have not succumbed to him. I have stayed true. I have maintained the promise. But now I need desperately, desperately, I need food. What is Jesus going to do? His response is simple and clear. I trust him. I trust him. He doesn't get into a debate with Satan. That's where Eve went wrong. He doesn't seek to defend himself. He doesn't say to the devil, I am not a son of God. I am the son of God. Let's get that clear right away, because you and I are going to lock horns for the next three years and until the day that I have you put to death. Let's work out who we are here. Jesus doesn't go down that road. The devil says, you're a son of God. Jesus says, well, I'll just deal with you in my humanity. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone. He doesn't extol the virtues of his position. He doesn't demand that his position be recognized. He lets the devil take that position, take that understanding, and he says, if you want that, that's fine. I'm going to fight about that. He's not going to give the devil any credence. It's simple and clear. He quotes from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3, and which you'll see in the next week, that he quotes from this same book through the chapter 6 through 8 on each occasion the devil comes to him. And Jesus takes the words that God gave to his people when they were in the wilderness. He uses those words, underscoring that this is the Word of God. It is written. Therefore saying that the Book of Deuteronomy is the Word of God. Therefore saying that the Pentateuch is the Word of God. It is God's Word that comes. And I will not succumb because I will trust Him. And so the temptation falls and feels. The approach, using food to awaken distrust of God and his word, had worked in Eden, in the land of plenty, in the life of Adam and Eve. But this same approach, trying to use the need for food to awaken a distrust in God and his word, is not going to work here for Jesus, in the land of destitution and the desert. Adam and Eve were bountifully provided for. Look at this, it's pleasing to the eye. Jesus is in desperate physical need, but Satan does not win the day. The temptation came to Jesus, and he dealt with it powerfully and simply. which reveal his strength of love for and trust in God. Man shall not live by bread alone. I trust him implicitly. What an example. God's word calls on us to trust God. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. Offer right sacrifices. Put your trust in the Lord. Call is clear. Trust in the Lord. It's a call that comes with clear promises. He trusted the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. Whoever gives thought to the Word will discover good, and blessed is the one who trusts the Lord. It's a call to trust that is supported time and time again in the Word of God by proofs that God will bless the one who trusts Him, that God will act on behalf of the one who trusts Him, that God will deliver the one who trusts Him. There's also the warning. Thus says the Lord. Cursed is the man who trusts in man, makes his flesh strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. The call is to trust in the Lord. The call is to believe in God. The call is to take God at His word. The promises are there. Trust in the Lord. Lean not on your own understanding and commit all your ways to Him and He will bless you. Do not trust in the Lord. Do not lean on the Lord. Turn away from the Lord and you will be cursed. And it's a call that was heeded. Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. The Lord is my strength and my shield. In Him my heart trusts. I am helped. My heart exults. With song I will give thanks to Him. He is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. He is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. Here is Jesus Christ. The call to trust. Knowing the provisions that are made for the one who trusts. and heeds that call as many before him had, only he does so perfectly. So we're called to trust the Lord. We're given promises about if we trust the Lord, how it will be well with us and ours. We're given examples of those who trust the Lord. So why do we not do it? Why do we not trust Him? When there's a real difficulty in our lives, why do we not trust Him? Let me put it another way. Why do you and I distrust him so much? Why is our default position, I must sort this out? Why is our default position not, I will trust him, I will wait, and I will see And I will let God sort this out. Why is it in our lives we thus distrust God so much? We have a difficulty in our lives and we say, yes, we believe in the sovereignty of God. Yes, we believe that God loves us. And yet the reality is that our behavior belies a different approach. Our behavior belies distrust in God. We behave and we speak as though God is not sovereign. We behave and we speak as though God is not love. We behave and we speak as though I must sort this out because nobody else really cares about me or cares about this situation or understands this situation. How many times have you said to someone else, you don't understand this situation. And what you're really saying at that point is, I'm the only one. Well, do you know what that is? That is distrusting of God. That is saying to God, I will deal with it. That is saying to the devil, yes, your way is better than God's way. That is saying, I will turn the stones into bread. The devil came to Jesus and says, look, he has left you hungry. He has left you after the spiritual battle. He has left you in need. Why not just meet the need yourself? You have the power to meet the need. I will not do so. I will trust him. Why do we distrust God so much? How many lies has God told us that our position is, I will not accept your way. We come to each other, you come to me at times, with a burden on your heart and I seek to school you and counsel you to trust in the Lord. But I look into your eyes and you know sometimes I look and I know that I'm not penetrating it. You're not hearing what I'm saying. Because you're saying, you don't understand, I'm going to turn these stones into bread. And I sit there and I look at you and I think, oh, if only I could get inside your heart. Not that I'm the fount of all wisdom because I've done this myself. Let me be clear about that. I can speak with authority from this, not just from the Word of God that is all authority, but I can speak a wee bit of authority from my own life. Do you hear me this morning? You who would rebel against God and not trust Him. Do you hear what is being said? A lot of the problems in our lives arise because we will not accept with humility who God is and what he does. Then I have to ask myself, why do I distrust God so much? What lies has God told me that I look at God and I say to Him, I'm not actually going to believe what you're going to say because in the past you told me one thing and you did another. And every time I've gone down that road I find, Andrew, there's no room down that road because God has never lied to you. He's only ever told you the truth. He's only ever said to you, this will happen and then you've gone down your way and you know what has happened? What has happened is what God has said. So I have no grounds at all, no grounds whatsoever for distrusting God other than my sinful rebellion. My sinful rebellion. I will do it. I will sort it. And do you know the problem with that? It ends in tears. Every single time. Because when we say we don't trust you, God, then we're divorcing ourselves from the One who loves us and the One who will provide for us in His time and in His way. His time and His way. which doesn't always suit us. In fact, it seldom suits us because we want to see it sorted now and we're not prepared to wait for a year or two or three or five or whatever it takes for God to address it. But do you know what? He does know best because he is all wise and all powerful. Oh, that we would say, I will trust Him in the darkest hours in our lives. Amen.