Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is Luke 4. I’m going to read verses 1-21, although emphasizing the initial part of the section of Scripture here. So please stand for the reading of God’s word. Luke 4, beginning at verse one, running through verse 21.

Then Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness being tempted for 40 days by the devil. And in those days he ate nothing. And afterward when they had ended he was hungry. And the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” But Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”

Then the devil, taking him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to him, “All this authority I will give you, and their glory, for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind me, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve.”

Then he brought him to Jerusalem, 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 shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee and the news of him went out through all the surrounding regions. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” And then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the wonderful gospel that we read in it and the strange way that it is accomplished in the context of Luke chapter 4. Bless us, Lord God, with the consideration of your Scriptures. Help us to know them, to be transformed by them. Help us as sons of yours to emulate your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in the power of the Spirit given to us on the basis of his death, resurrection and ascension.

We thank you Lord God for our Savior. We thank you for his word and we ask that you would empower us as your people so that we might as he did triumph. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Please be seated.

So I’m pushing the season of Lent. Lent’s coming. This is a typical Lent text. 40 days, 40 fasting days during the Lenten season. Our Ash Wednesday service will be a week from Wednesday. So next week on Wednesday evening, we’ll have an Ash Wednesday service.

You know, we’re sort of a liturgy light. We’ll have an Ash Wednesday service with no ashes. But we will commence the season of Lent. And this text is, as I said, a typical Lenten text, and it informs us about our Lenten season approaching as well and the purpose of it and kind of what it tells us about. I’m going to have three points. You get to make your own outlines today. Is the order of worship. Is there a blank page at the back?

Yeah. Teach your kids to do this. So you know, there’s three points today. Okay. You can write them down. Keep you engaged. First point is victory. The victory of the Son of God. The second point is the word. This is a victory won by the use of the word of God. So word. The third: responsibility. This is a victory won by the word that calls us to personal responsibility as sons of God.

Now if you want a three-point alliterated outline I can give you that too. Instead of victory, you can put down encouragement because hopefully as we read of the victory of our Savior in the midst of suffering, in the relationship of suffering to victory, hopefully that’s encouraging to us as we go through difficulties, trials, and tribulations. And it’s encouraging to us to know that’s what’s happening in the world, that the year of Jubilee has arrived and will not end. Encouragement is the victory.

You know, we’re very encouraged. I know our brothers and sisters protesters in the Ukraine are so encouraged. Now, there’s dangerous times over there still, but in case you didn’t weren’t aware of this, in the last two days, the protesters won. By the way, they did it in a country that wouldn’t allow them to have weapons, took their guns away, right? So they fought the military with tanks, you know, the opposition had tanks and guns and all that stuff, and they had, you know, piles of tires or Molotov cocktails.

But you know a day and a half ago they took over the city of Kiev and the president was run out of office. The parliament voted unanimously to dismiss him. The opposition leader who he had you know jailed after he beat her in the last election. You know those kind of dictatorship countries you lock up your opponent. Well anyway I don’t want to go on too much about that but that’s victory being worked out in history now and we’re not at the end of that story in the Ukraine yet, but we should be rejoicing with our brothers and sisters for the overthrow at least temporarily of the tyrant. And that should be encouragement to us.

So instead of victory, you could put an e-word encouragement on your note taking that you’re doing. You know, we need to train our kids to listen, right? And how do you listen? Well, one way you listen is you use your senses and you use, you know, your ears, but you also use your hands. And when you write your notes, it doesn’t mean you’re going to go back and study them later, you might want to do that. But it’s a way of, you know, cementing what you’ve heard. You remember it better. I mean, it’s absolutely true.

So instead of word, you could use equipping. So the victory of Christ in this text is encouraging and the fact that he does it by the word is equipping to us. So that we enter into that victory through the equipping of the word of God. So instead of word, you could use an e-word, equipping. And instead of responsibility, you can write exhortation. This text has I think by way of application an exhortation to us in consideration of where that bread was or what the time period is when Jesus is doing what he’s doing. You’ll understand a little better when I get there.

But the last point will be an exhortation to us who live in increasingly socialistic welfare state minded country. We’ll have an exhortation to personal responsibility instead of looking to those who would promise us bread and circuses and use turning stones into bread.

You know, John Maynard Keynes, the father of Keynesian economics, who really is sort of the basis of quantitative easing, the 80 billion a month the Fed is creating out of nothing and pumping into the economy. So your stock market funds look good. You know, well, how much reality? Who knows? Because the balloon’s being blown up again. But Keynes is the father of using monetary and fiscal policy to control the private economy and to use the state in that control.

Keynes, he used this text. He said, “That’s what we do when we do capitalization of debt and this kind of thing. We’re turning stones into bread. It’s a miracle. It works. Just pump out the money.” So at the last point today, it will be an exhortation to us in our mindset. Okay. So let’s get back to victory. This text is a text of victory and the placement of it is interesting. Right?

So clearly in the first verse it talks about the Jordan. So it’s reference to baptism, right? Interestingly if you look the few verses before this you don’t see the baptism. You’ll be surprised because what you see is the genealogy. So the last half of chapter 3 is the genealogy of our Savior. And earlier in chapter 3 is the baptism of Jesus. So the text in this text wants us to refer back to that baptism. It says that he’s leaving the Jordan after he’s baptized.

Now if you’re a good Jew who knew your Bible, you knew the word of God and you’re reading in this text and you read that the power of the Spirit is what’s driving Jesus into the wilderness, right? That’s what the first verse says. The Spirit takes him into the wilderness. And you know that in the baptism, the Spirit descends in visible form, right? Well, if you know that, you know a battle’s coming. You know that somebody’s going to be a victor and somebody’s going to be a loser because that what happens in the Old Testament.

You know, the Spirit empowered judges of the Old Testament. The Spirit came upon them to deliver people so they could, you know, knock heads and so they could crush the heads of those that represent Satan who are doing his will. And so if you know the judges and you know the story of other heroes, you know, when the word of God comes upon them, you know that when the Spirit comes upon them, there’s going to be a battle. There’s going to be a fight. There’s going to be the thrill. The big one’s coming up. And this is Jesus. He’s the culmination of the whole Scriptures, right?

And we know this. So we know we should know our Bibles. Spirit empowered deliverers and we should know that Jesus is the great culmination of all that—second person of the Trinity who comes to earth to do a mission—and now we know looking at this text to expect victory right. And as we look at the end of this text or at least a little further down when we would normally stop in this text we saw the victory right. So what does he do? He spends 40 days in the wilderness and it’s at the end of that 40 days that these three temptations happen. That’s important for a reason later on.

But it’s at the end of that time. And so Jesus does this with the word and then what does he do? He goes on a victory tour of Galilee, right? He starts he goes back to Galilee and he starts preaching and the recorded sermon of his is given to us in the last few verses that I read and that’s why I read them. So you’ll see that what happened in the wilderness was because the victory of God was accomplished definitively over Satan. Because what he does then having beaten back Satan in the wilderness, we know now that the battle that we were expecting at the beginning with the Spirit empowerment that he’s got, then we know that Jesus has won the victory.

It’s important that we look at this. So if you look down, where’s the verse? Okay, so verse 18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” See, it ties us back to that. Ties us back to a knowledge that the Spirit comes upon people to empower them for battle.

You know, it’s really interesting because you know, if you just read the Bible, try to take off you know, the cultural glasses that we all wear and the stuff we heard in Sunday school a lot of times and this and that, things look a little different. You know, if you see this and draw the connections back to the Old Testament, Spirit and power, judges, etc., you know, the idea of the Holy Spirit becomes a different thing for you.

I remember years ago—30 years ago probably—early on when we were starting the church I heard this talk and the talk was about you know pioneer theology or settler theology right. So it’s a Western kind of metaphor that was set up and they said in the settler theology our churches have little tiny windows so we can defend them right but in pioneer theology it’s a wagon train and we’re, whoa, we’re going. Let’s go. And it’s settler theology where we’re just kind of maintaining stuff, waiting for the end.

The Holy Spirit, the guy said, was sort of like a you know, a girl at the bar who comes along and you’re discouraged and she gives you a drink and tickles you under the chin and tries to cheer you up, right? But in pioneer theology, the Spirit is this wild guy. You sort of—he’s the scout off ahead and he comes running back and he’ll shoot his gun and make noise and call you off in that direction to do what you’re going to do next.

Now, I know there’s lots of shortcomings of the metaphor and it’s true that the Holy Spirit is an encourager to us, right? I mean, I don’t want to get rid of that, but what has the Spirit done here and what is he doing? He’s given the victory to Jesus. So now in the power of the Spirit, he interprets you know, what’s going on. He tells us what his mission is. He begins to preach.

Now he preaches the gospel to the poor. Okay. So let’s take off the glasses. Let’s try to see what the Scriptures say, you know. So the preaching ministry of Jesus as recorded for us in the Bible. Now this is a sermon. This is a sermon, okay? The preaching ministry of Jesus as recorded in the Bible begins with the preaching of the gospel. That’s great. We like that, you know, but it doesn’t quite look like our gospel.

He’s going to preach the gospel to the poor. What does he say about this? He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Now that’s—he’s reading from Isaiah. You know, Isaiah was talking about the year of Jubilee and Isaiah was applying the year of the Jubilee to what would happen when the exiles come back from exile when God delivers them against their enemies, right? From their enemies. And so the text what it’s talking about now that’s very helpful to us I think because when we want to know what the gospel is if we start with the words of our Savior recording the word of God that he has just used to defeat Satan in the wilderness right—he defeats every temptation by using the word of God—then we’re this is an important text to determining what the gospel is. It’s not the only text, understand that, but this is Jesus. This is Jesus using the inspired word by which he gained the victory over the tempter who was king of this age so to speak, right?

And this victory speech that Jesus says—I’m going to talk about the gospel and this is the gospel he says—and the gospel the good news is not restricted to personal salvation and forgiveness of sins.

Now I’ve been saying this for 30 years but I’m not sure we quite get it a lot of times, right? You know what we do at this church is we move from the beginning of the service where the grace of God is declared to you and the forgiveness of sins, but that ain’t the end of the service. And the rest of the service isn’t just that message as important as it is for a personal walk. The rest of the service moves on to the equipping thing by the word of God and then the assurance of victory at the Lord’s Supper and the empowerment for victory.

So you know, again, if you want to talk about the gospel being God saves sinners and God died for sinners, that’s great. Praise God. It’s the foundation for everything else. And we could you know, somewhat metaphorically say that he’s preaching the gospel to the poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who recognize their poverty. It’s not as if some people out there are rich in spirit and some are poor in spirit. The idea is as fallen men and women, we’re all poor in spirit and blessed are those who recognize their poverty, right? The kingdom of heaven belongs to those people because they’re going to be saved.

God brings you to a recognition of your sin and your shortcomings and you can’t save yourself no matter what you try to do. And so you know, we could make that metaphorically his application here, but obviously he’s talking far broader than that. He’s talking about the implications of Christ yes coming and finally affecting what was always in place through his coming work in the Old Testament. But the news is, yes, salvation’s accomplished, but the news is he’s going to defeat enemies.

That’s how he starts this whole section of Luke by defeating Satan in the wilderness. And he’s going to declare the year of release or the Jubilee year actually. He’s going to deliver us from oppression. That just doesn’t mean just demonic, satanic oppression. The Bible is filled from beginning to end with real enemies, folks. Real enemies. You know, we just read this prayer of confession and there’s a sentence in there that we ask God to vindicate us from our enemies. That’s a great prayer to pray because it reminds us we’ve got enemies.

And yeah, there’s spiritual forces and powers in the high places. Understand it. But there’s real people right now plotting against you and who want to oppress you. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it. By the way, they’re doing a pretty good job. Now we hope in defeating them, we bring them to the cross. Amen. Yeah. We hope they get saved like we did because we know that at the core of our being, we’re no different. But one way or the other, we want deliverance.

They wanted the president of Ukraine out. Did you hear about what they saw in his house? I mean, incredible opulence and richness in a country that is starving to death. You know, this guy had soaked the whole country, sucked up all the wealth, and built himself great palaces. Well, you know, it’s like that here. Not quite as bad, but you know, you hear lots of talk about you know, equality of income and stuff. You hear it from a guy who, you know, well, don’t get me started.

So you know, God wants us to see the gospel. It the gospel is victory and it’s victory in every dimension. Okay. You know, if we want to reach the next generation for Jesus, they are intensely interested in this. They like this text. They want to know how to fix the world, how to release people from oppression, to roll back injustice, and to create justice. Now the problem is that step two of this text, the word, yeah, well, there that’s a little more difficult. We’ll get to that in a minute.

But the point is this victory that Jesus accomplishes is then proclaimed. And that is the gospel. And it’s multi-dimensional, and it has societal impact. And he says at the end of the text we read—this text is fulfilled. The victory has come. So it’s this. So what’s happening in the temptations of our Savior is he is doing Spirit empowered warfare and accomplishing victory against his and our enemies. Okay. So that’s victory and that I hope brings a sense of encouragement to you.

Now we could talk about a lot of things here. You know, Jesus is obviously the new Israel in this text, right? You see that—40 days, 40 years, and you know, that was that’s a detail that’s just not something the pastors do to sort of say, oh, well, but is that really true that the 40 days of Lent or the 40 days in the wilderness line up with the 40 years? Yeah, there’s texts about that. When Ezekiel is going to demonstrate you know, the 40 years coming of wilderness wandering so to speak. He lays down for 40 days.

And actually we read, let’s see, where’s the text? Give me just a minute. Numbers 14:34. “According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, 40 days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely 40 years, and you shall know my rejection.”

So that’s a explicit text. They spied out the land. Remember, they come out of Egypt and they’re go—and they’re going to go into the promised land, but they don’t want to do it. They but they spied it out for 40 days. And God tells us explicitly in Numbers 14:34. That’s why it’s 40 years over here. So that connection—Jesus 40 days in the wilderness to the 40 years of Israel’s wilderness wanderings is it’s straight Scripture. Nothing I’m doing about a type or anything like that. That’s what the Bible says.

So Jesus is clearly the new Israel. By the way, when they spied out the land, what was—why didn’t they go in? What was the problem? Fear. That’s right. They didn’t want to go in and engage in warfare. They didn’t want to have to go in and make war against the inhabitants because they were fearful the inhabitants were better than them. You see, it was the unbelief that the word of God creates victory as we apply it in whatever situation we’re in. That’s why they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

Okay. So anyway, Jesus is the true Israel, right? He’s obviously that here, and lots of similarities. And Jesus is second Adam. You know, I mentioned the chronology thing and how earlier in Luke 3, he got the baptism and then it says he was 30 years old when he started his ministry and it gives his genealogy, which is kind of odd, right? I mean, you expect the genealogy in the first chapter, but he begins the genealogy with his ministry.

And so it puts it in there, but one thing that God does when he does that—he’s always doing lots of things, but one thing he’s doing is at the end of that genealogy—he retraces his genealogy back to Adam. “Son of this, son of that, son of Adam, who was the son of God.” That’s what it says in Luke 3 at the end of chapter 3, verse 38, I think.

And so what do we have here? “If you are the Son of God, blah, blah, blah.” “If you are the son,” two of the three temptations, Satan addresses Jesus that way. So what does that tell us? Well, Jesus is second Adam. I mean, it’s as plain as the nose in your face. You don’t got to know your Bibles very much to make that connection that I just told you—that Adam was the son of God and now we’ve got the Son of God and now he’s in a wilderness. How’d the wilderness get there? Adam’s sin, right?

Adam didn’t want to do battle with the serpent speaking through—or Satan speaking through a serpent, right? Didn’t want to do that. So so Jesus is Israel, the true Israel, and Jesus is Adam, the new Adam. And in both cases, what Adam couldn’t do and what Israel couldn’t do to get the victory, right? This Jesus does because he’s the Son of God. They were pictures of our inability to do victory, to come to victory. And they were pictures preparing us for the only one who could give us victory over the satanic opposition that attacked us all in the garden.

And that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. He gets all the glory for it beginning to end. See, it’s showing us that. So Jesus is the new Israel. Jesus is the new Adam and he’s the one that gets us the victory. But the funny thing is that we’ve had a big shift, right? If you think of earlier in chapter 3 and Jesus is at the Jordan and he gets baptized and the dove descends and the Father says, “This is my beloved Son.” And you know, there’s all this beautiful stuff happening with Jesus at the river, right? I mean, it’s a great scene.

And then right away after, you know, he begins his mission, his mission becomes completely the opposite. Now, instead of God the Father speaking to him, he’s got Satan tempting him. Right? Now, instead of being in a nice river and riverbank and fertile stuff and all that stuff, now he’s in a wilderness, a dry wilderness. Right? So you can look at the analogies, but the point is over and over again, he has gone from what is a wonderful setting to now when he begins his ministry, a wilderness.

And see, I bring it up not just to point out the interesting lit structure there—the storyline that God tells the story line’s to a purpose. If there was any place we thinking our way would want to accomplish victory, it’s back at that River Jordan where you’re well fed and rested and everything’s good and the Father’s talking to you and encouraging you, right? That’s how we think victory happens.

But what the Scriptures is telling us in Luke 4 is that victory at the end of Luke 4 is accomplished in the wilderness through suffering and trials. Now, yeah, there’s the associations with Adam and Israel, and so you got to do the wilderness thing to get those associations, but there’s a bigger thing going on. The bigger thing going on is that Jesus is the Son of God. Not just linking him to Adam, but he is the Son of God. Okay? And what does Satan want to do? He wants to attack the Son’s relationship to the Father.

And he wants to play on the idea of power in the way we normally think about how we’re going to get victory in the context of our lives, right? And Jesus is doing jiu-jitsu sort of stuff here, but he’s doing it because he knows that as the Son, this is what he does. Let me read a few lines here from Peter Leithart who does a great job with this in one of his blog posts or something. I don’t know what it was. He says, “Each of the temptations challenges Jesus’s mission, his mission as Son. As I said, ‘If you are the Son, if you are the Son’—Satan tempts Jesus to use his power for his own benefit and to seek life apart from the will of God but being Son means to live by the word of God right.

So he tries to turn the rocks into bread—live by your power and authority and stuff—but no, as the Son, being the Son means to live by every word of God. Satan offers Jesus an empire by becoming Satan’s vessel. But being Son means receiving the kingdom from the Father, right? Receiving the kingdom from the Father and the Father’s time through the Father’s means. Okay? Satan tries to short circuit that process. That’s what he did with Adam and it worked pretty good.

‘Forget the wait over when you can eat this thing or not eat this thing. Eat it now.’ And so he subverted Adam as the Son of God who as the Son should have honored his Father by obeying the word of God rather than being tempted to disobey the word of God. And then Leithart says, ‘In the final temptation rather, Satan quotes Scripture to tempt Jesus to escape harm but being Son means going to the cross in obedience to the Father.’

So you know the point is Jesus is on a mission. His mission is as the Son and Satan tries to get him to become autonomously the king. Apart from receiving the kingdom from the Father, apart from living not by bread alone but by the word of God, he tries to break down all those associations. That’s significant because that’s who we are, right? We’re sons of God as well in Christ.

And as a result, we can expect Satan to cause us to doubt the Father’s love or plan for us. And Satan wants us to act outside of our mission as sons of God. That’s what he did with Jesus. That’s what he does to us. I want to read from Deuteronomy 8 here. And you may want to turn to this Scripture. Turn to Deuteronomy 8.

This is where Jesus turned. The first temptation. You know, this is where Jesus turned. He’s quoting all three of Jesus’s—while you’re turning, you can listen. Teach your kids that while you’re turning, you can listen, you know, you’re you’re multitaskers, right? You’re not old PCs. So every one of the temptations Jesus answers of course with the Scriptures, but specifically the scriptural citations of things directly said in the wilderness.

So again, he ties it to the wilderness. And by the way, the movement in Luke’s gospel of these three temptations, right, is also kind of ties the story of Jesus to the history of Israel. When did they grumble about bread? Before or after Sinai? Well, they did a lot of grumbling afterwards. But in the account, they actually grumble in Exodus before they get to Sinai. And then after they get to Sinai later on, much later on, they go into Jerusalem.

So Jesus’s temptations goes from bread to mountain, right? That’s where Satan takes him up, chooses all the kings of the world to the pinnacle, whatever that is to some kind of high point in the temple. And so it’s the same—it’s the movement of Israel that’s been delivered from Egypt, right? So they complain about bread, they go to Sinai, the mountain, and then they go in and build the temple eventually.

And so Jesus tracks all of that stuff, but he’s doing it. You remember, Adam is son of God. Israel is God’s son, too, right? And there’s big theme of—it doesn’t repeat it as often as Israel being the bride, but Israel is also described in the Old Testament as the son. Now if you read Deuteronomy 8 in a little fuller context of what our Savior quotes. This is significant.

Of course, it’s the word of God. What a stupid statement, Dennis. But it’s particularly significant for what we’re reading here because he’s quoting the Scripture. Great. But he’s also giving us how to resist temptation. And more than that, he’s telling us how to have victory, how to press the claims of King Jesus in every area of life. He’s telling us the method here, right?

And so if we go back and look at the fuller context of the few little bars he quotes in the temptation narrative and look at the whole song, here’s Deuteronomy 8.

“Every commandment which I command you today, you must be careful to observe.” They weren’t observing it to get life. They’ve been delivered. The law of God—we talked about this—but the law of God is not ever intended to save us. It’s intended to give us this is how you live as sons of God. These are the family rules. Okay? So it’s always that. Okay?

“Every commandment which I command you today, you must be careful to observe that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers.” How are they going to do it? They’re going to have victory. They’re going to go in and drive out the Canaanites, the wicked people that are there then. So this is about victory and how you’re going to do it. And you’re going to do it. Right away. We’re told before we even get to what Jesus quotes, it’s by list. It’s by the word of God. Just what Jesus does in the temptations in response to Satan.

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all these 40 days or 40 years rather in the wilderness. Why did he do it? Okay, so we’re going to talk about why God led them in the wilderness. What was going on? Why did they have all these problems for 40 years, right? What’s the purpose?

And this is significant, as I said, for two reasons. Because this is why God takes you through whatever trial or tribulation you had last week or this morning getting ready or whatever it is in your family—with your spouse, with your community, looking at you know, the stupid attorney general in our state that won’t defend the laws passed by the people, blah blah. So whatever trial or tribulation we’re going through, you know, they feel, at least in my home, sometimes they can feel like they’re crushing us, right? You got various trials and tribulations and you just want to put your head in the sand and say, “Forget all that stuff.” But even that’s a trial.

So whatever trial or tribulation you’re going through, I think is analogous to what Jesus does in the wilderness and what Israel God was doing with Israel in the 40 years. He says, “Why did I do this?” He says—I don’t know, just missed the verse. Okay.

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness. I always love that. Let him around in circles. Led him in the wilderness for 40 years to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. You know, you really should read this whole chapter, at least the first half of it, because throughout this, it’s very pertinent again to our situation.

He predicts that you know, when you go in and you possess the land. This is Deuteronomy, right? He’s talking about I’m on the verge of entering in. You’re going to you be careful unless you forget, you think my power got this thing and here’s America and it’s forgotten and it doesn’t remember God. And so we have great trials. But in your life, understand this: you know, this text actually talks about this. What does a father do for his son? He chastises him, right? Because it’s good for him.

He wants him to be humble because only by being humble can that son really be on mission as a son of God, one of the sons of God, right? And he trains him and he tests him to see if he’s going to keep the word of the Father. You do that through little kids and your father in heaven. This text says this is why it happens.

Why do bad things happen? Why doesn’t my foot heal quicker? Why did I fall on my back? You know, why did I have that misunderstanding, you know, with whoever it is I had a misunderstanding with? What’s going on in the world anyway? Can’t I get peace anywhere? Why is this happening?

Well, here’s the answer. It’s happening for our well-being. It’s happening to make us victorious. And unlike the world, victory is not accomplished by prideful arrogance and strength on our own effect. Victory happens because God brings us trials and tribulations and troubles so that we become humble and submissive to him and as we are humble and obey him and follow his lead and let his commandments tell us what we’re supposed to do—not our own wisdom, not the wisdom of the world, which is what Satan offered to Jesus.

Not what we think will work best as we humble ourselves before him and say, “Give us your word. Help us to obey your word, Lord God.” The end result of that is we are victors in Jesus Christ. Then that’s what you want is encouragement, right? This text is telling you that’s how you get there. The very things you complained and I won’t use the word but you know that we you and I both you know complained about last week and grumbled about—Numbers 11 that’s all they do in the wilderness is grumble it seems all the things that we grumble about in our own lives—God says he’s done this to humble us to test us to know whether we’re going to keep his commandments.

Now does he know or not know? He knows. What’s really happening is do we know? Do we can walk around with a great facade and self-delusion. We’re keeping God’s laws and we love God and all this stuff and then we stub our toe and we grumble and complain, but God says you’re not keeping my commandments when you do that kind of thing, right? When you grumble and complain.

So he does it to humble us, to test us, to know what’s in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. There’s no way to conquer. There’s no way to victory. There’s no way to the full implications of the gospel, brothers and sisters, without the commandments of God. If we throw those away, we’ve got nothing. Nothing. And that’s what’s happened. The church has thrown them away by and large in this culture. And who’s winning? Not us. Not us.

So the purpose of these things is to drive us back to the word of God. He humbles us, allows us to hunger, whatever it is. And then he gets to this text. He says, “to humble you and to—and I led I fed you with manna. But you did not know nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”

That’s what Jesus quotes. But whenever Jesus or the New Testament quotes a text always go back read the context of it, right? There. How many a few bars of a very important song and this important song tells us the key to victory. And the key to victory is the next point. It’s being humbled so that we might follow the word of God. The word of God is the equipping that God gives us.

Please read Deuteronomy 8, some of you this next day or two or tonight, and just look at what it says and look how this theme that I began for you flows on and works itself out. But we’ve got to move ahead. But the point is the victory is accomplished by suffering because suffering brings us to the point of humility and brings us to the point of looking at God’s word and being more steadfast in our obedience to his commandments. And his commandments are the key, right?

Jesus saves us. He gives us the Holy Spirit and the Spirit leads us in the way of the Father. And the way of the Father is reflected in his word. And if you don’t know the word of God, don’t be prepared for victory. Be prepared for defeat. That’s the second point. This victory is won by the use of the word of God. The only equipping that prepares us to be victorious in Jesus Christ is the word of God. That’s it. Okay, this is what Jesus just said.

And you know, it’s interesting because the way it works is Jesus, he quotes the Scriptures. Quotes the Scriptures again to Satan. And then what does Satan do in the third temptation? He quotes the Scriptures. It’s written. Jesus says, “It’s written. It’s written.” And then Satan says, “Well, it’s written.” And he quotes from the Psalms, right? Quotes from a psalm. And then Jesus says it is said. Interesting because to us the word of God is not a written word alone.

When we read that it’s written, it is the voice of God speaking to us. In Hebrews, the voice of God speaks. And that’s what the word is when he quotes the Scriptures in Hebrews. He’s speaking to us today. We have a living relationship with the Father through his breathed word. Right? And so Jesus says that.

But very importantly, there’s two things about the word of God. One, you’ve got to know the word of God. So we have strategy meeting yesterday and we kick around this idea and that idea and maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that. Maybe we should dump this old distinctive or, you know, maybe it’s getting in the way, maybe it’s not helping us market, whatever it is. And you know, that’s good and fine to have those discussions, but let me tell you something.

If you’re going to talk about stuff that we do because we understand the word of God to tell us to do it, we’re not changing unless you can show us what the word of God says. Something else. We don’t care if it’s unpopular. We don’t care if the state’s going to, you know, throw us in jail for it. Now we could be wrong. We’re always open to hearing how we might be wrong about applying the Scriptures to, you know, whatever it is.

Year of exclusion, Lord’s Day sort of worship we do. I always worship for believers or non—all that stuff. We could talk about it. Maybe you can you know, help us to reflect on what the truth of God is. But if we if we don’t know that the word of God tells us to dump a practice or to change it, we’re not doing it. Church can close its doors. They can lock us up. It doesn’t make any difference. The only thing we have to accomplish victory is the word of God.

Now that means that if you want your life to be victorious, and it isn’t, I would suggest, you know, that you attend to the equipping of God’s word. The only way to equip us for the victory, you have to use God’s word. You can’t use, you know, worldly wisdom. You can’t use your own ideas. You can’t use what the state wants you to do. You know, it’s not as if all that stuff is wrong. A lot of that stuff is based on the word of God, as it turns out, because we’re in a post-Christian culture. But at the end of the day, brothers and sisters, the only method of victory, full gospel, okay?

Full gospel victory, social justice, right? Bringing justice to victory, letting go the oppressed, defeating the enemies, real enemies that we have. The only way to do that is the word of God. And that’s why God brings us troubles to remind us of that to test us. Are we following his commandments or not? Because as a good Father, he wants us to be successful. He wants us to have victorious lives. And they’re not going to look like victorious lives to a lot of people like Jesus in the wilderness didn’t look like it—doesn’t look like that on our—but it’s through that very difficulty and suffering that God drives us back to his word and empowers us and shows the nature of God, right?

The nature of God is not a bully. The nature of God is to love and to serve and to lay down his life for others. And so God wants us to suffer for other people and help him in that way. But equipping by the word of God, if we don’t have the word, we got nothing. But secondly, Satan, you know, it’s almost humorous what Satan’s account in this thing. But he then kind of understands after two times that, you know, if Jesus is going to be quoting the word of God, he better do a little of that, too.

And he doesn’t. So it’s not enough just to make the word of God the basis for your actions. You have to understand the word of God. You have to understand its misuse by people, right? And it’s interesting. We don’t have time to look at it, but you could later today if you want, but the—my wife pointed this out. She did a study. Actually, my wife is the one that studied this text out and kind of got me rolling on it, so I owe a lot of what I’m telling you today to her, but she was showing me how when Jesus quotes—when Satan quotes the psalm in the third temptation, you know, about casting yourself down because the angels will bear you up and all that stuff, it’s Psalm 91.

John, which psalm is it? 91. Thank you. So it’s Psalm 91. And John probably knows, but probably a lot of you don’t, that right after that, God says, “You’ll tread on serpents. You will have victory over the serpent.” Okay? So Satan doesn’t quote that part, but Jesus knew it. Jesus could discern good Bible teaching from bad Bible teaching. So what we have to do to have victory is not just to know the Bible, but to know it well enough to dispute people that are applying it wrongly. Okay?

And that’s what this temptation tells us. Two times quotes the Scriptures. Third time Satan quotes them. But Jesus knows the Scriptures better than Satan. And he can discern bad teaching. He can discern bad teaching. All right. Running a little out of time.

Third point, and this is you know kind of more teasing out some implications of the text. I tell you that it was significant that these temptations happen after 40 days are up, right? And we connect it back to Israel in the wilderness and the first temptations about bread. It’s always about food. That’s what it was with Adam, too. And so with Israel, what happened?

Well, God gave him manna, right? And how long did the manna last for? You know, there a couple of very explicit texts that tell us that the manna lasted until they got to the border and started going to the promised land. The manna stops then. Now for 40 years these people that had come out of Egypt where they were slaves, okay? They had a slave mentality and you could see it.

Slaves, you know, they get provision of food from Pharaoh or whoever it is, but it’s never very good food and it’s the same darn food over and over again and they tend to complain about it, right? I mean, people that are dependent upon civil rulers for their wealth wellbeing and their life supply tend to grumble about it. They always want it a little better because what they get isn’t all that great. So the people are like that in the wilderness.

They’re out of Egypt. They have a slave mentality and they grumble a lot about things. And so God has them die off in the wilderness and he trains their kids, right? And so but he’s training them. You know, one implication is manna is heavenly food. That’s great. It’s really Christ that’s feeding and sustaining. We understand all that. But there’s a very practical point to be made here and that is that once they enter into—now they’re going to go into the battle they’re going into the fray they’re going into the year of Jubilee they’re going into the triumph we’re following Jesus because he’s gotten the victory for us right—and as we follow him we’re like him we’re not going to use miracles or worship somebody that’s promising us miracles to get our food because God says when you cross that border into the promised land that manna stops you have to be responsible people.

Now, now he gave them a little bit of transition. There were trees they didn’t plant, but they still had to harvest the fruit off the trees, right? And eat the crops. But see what the point is, there’s this text placing these temptations at the end of the 40 days ties it to the liminal space, the doorway space between the wilderness and going into Canaan. And at that space, the thing that happens is the manna ceases and God says, “Grow up. Grow up.

Don’t be slaves anymore. Don’t expect me or whoever it is to provide all your needs. Now brothers and sisters, we live in times in which people and you know it. You know the statistics. I don’t know how many% of the people are on food stamps or whatever it is and you know all the you know the statistics. You hear it all the time. I hope unless you’ve turned off the TV, which I know is a big temptation to do with all the discouraging news, but it’s not discouraging. It’s God bringing judgments upon us to show us what’s happening.

And what’s happening is we’re not being successful in resisting the temptation to have this miraculous deliverance of bread to us when God calls us to be responsible people. Okay, that’s why Keynes referred back to this temptation to set up monetary policy of oppression essentially that would be used by the civil state to control the private marketplace and promise less bumps in the road up and down if you’ll just let us, you know, take care of the money and decide how much money to have in circulation and if we want to print up 80 billion this month, send it into the economy, you know, mess up the entire system of the flow of the free market that gives us adequate representations of what’s going to be good for ourselves and our future.

So the point is, and you know, I know this is probably some of you will not agree with this last point, but I think there’s a relationship here to the sort of slave mentality that we’re slipping into because we’re moving away from Jesus who brings us victory by showing us the root of responsibility which is to know the word of God, submit to that word and wait for the Father to provide us while we’re doing his will moving into that promised land.

So the third e is uh—well it’s responsibility is the third point—but the third e is exhortation. The third point rather is exhortation. The e is exhortation. It’s an exhortation to you and I. We live we swim in a big pool where dependent upon other people—dependence upon you know worshiping the civil state to provide us bread from stones to make something out of nothing and to produce wealth you know whole cloth we live in an age that’s where we swim and have our being and it’s easy for us increasingly and of course this is what’s happened—Christianity’s become more and more socialistic and this temptation that Jesus successfully resists is a temptation that shows us victory it shows us the encouragement of knowing that victory is what he’s all about.

It gives us the equipping of the word of God for what we’re supposed to do relative to all these things. And then it gives us the exhortation to be responsible as we flow forward into the week from today’s worship service. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your blessings to us and we thank you for the depth and richness of your word. We can never even begin to plumb its depths as we talk about it from Lord’s Day to Lord’s Day. But we thank you for the simple messages today that we see in it—victory and equipping and exhortation, Lord God. And we thank you for your word that gives us the victory and calls us to be responsible people.

And we pray that we would as we offer our tribute to you, Lord God, now that we would do at the same time offer ourselves in obedience to your word, that we would accept the difficulties and trials and tribulations without grumbling or disputing, without complaining, that we would see instead it as a point of evaluation to point us back to your word which will indeed lead us into victory and blessing. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.