Luke 4:9-13

Luke chapter 4, verses 9 to 13 for our text study this morning. And he, meaning Satan, brought him, our Savior Jesus Christ, to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, if thou be the son of God, cast thyself down from hence. For it is written, he shall give his angels. charge over thee to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dashed thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, it is said, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. May God bless him. to us is sacred and holy word this morning. When the Union Pacific Railroad was under construction, they had to go over some large gorges out west and build trussle bridges. And over a particularly huge gorge, they built this trussle bridge over this huge canyon. Before it was open for commercial use, the construction engineer wanted to test the strength of bridge. And so he loaded up a train with twice as much weight as it would normally carry as a payload, drove it out on top of the bridge, and left it sit there for 24 hours hanging over this gorge. One of the workmen complained, are you trying to break this bridge? To which the engineer replied, no, I’m trying to prove that it’s unbreakable. Jesus, Christ was subjected to a sustained temptation by the devil. What was God’s purpose in leading Christ into these temptations by His Spirit to be heavily assaulted by the crafty devil? It was to prove that Christ was unbreakable. It was to prove to us that we could have confidence in our Savior. Because he can overcome Satan. He defeated Satan at every turn, proving his character, his holy character to all. Now we come to Satan’s final temptation here of our Lord. He’s still seeking to find some kind of weakness to exploit. The first temptation was for Christ to distrust the providence of God. that God won’t give you your daily bread. You’ve got to make these stones into bread. The second temptation was a temptation to seek the riches and power and the glory of this world. Worldliness. I will give you all these kingdoms if you will bow down before me. And the third temptation is presumption regarding God’s preservation to engage in a reckless act cast yourself down from the pinnacle of this temple and the angels will catch you up so we want to look at Satan’s third temptation this morning and then Lord willing next week we’ll look at the reply of Christ to it now notice the place of this temptation verse 9 tells us very clearly that it was at Jerusalem and it was at the temple. Now we’re not told how Christ was transported from the wilderness to the city of Jerusalem or how Christ was set on a pinnacle of the temple. Possibly Satan could supernaturally transport a person, maybe like the spirit caught away Philip and transported him from out there in the desert, where he was speaking with the Ethiopian eunuch all the way to the Mediterranean coast in Acts chapter 18 just picked them up and transported them. I don’t know. The word pinnacle here speaks of one of the highest places on the roof of the temple. The Greek word pinna here appears to signify the extreme edge of the rooftop here. We could look down over and see at a distance what was below you. Josephus describes such a place. He speaks of it as the porch, on the top of which it was a dreadful place to look down. So it was a rooftop porch. You remember in those days a lot of the roofs were flat roofs so that they could be, you could walk on them. They’re not, you know, slanted something. Some of our roofs are pretty slanted. It would be not easy to walk on them. So here’s the place of temptation we see here. Now, Satan demands that Christ publicly prove himself to be the Son of God. If thou be the Son of God. He’s bringing up the same question that he brought up earlier in this chapter in verse 3. status as son. Now before, it was sort of, well, prove to me, and prove to yourself, maybe, that you’re the son of God. Now, here it seems to be more public. Show everybody that you are the son of God. Ask yourself down from hence from the pinnacle of the temple to the ground below. You would be admired as one under this special care of God who rescues you from destruction. You will not be hurt, for God will not let you come from. the harm, you know his providence is watching over you. Then all Jerusalem will see and acknowledge that you are more than a mere me and me, and indeed you are the Son of God. This seems to be the argument. So we said Satan’s demand that Christ publicly prove himself to be the Son of God. In verse 10, in 11, we see Satan’s use of Scripture to tempt Christ. This is quite interesting, isn’t it? For it is written, he should. shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee. In their hands, they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Lo and behold, Satan can quote Scripture. We shouldn’t think that Satan is ignorant of the content of Scripture. You see how readily he knows what is in the Word of God. He knows it well. He can quoted. Since Jesus has been so dependent upon Scripture, Satan says, okay, I’ll wrap this temptation up in Scripture. The words are taken from Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12. And they express a promise which, when rightly understood, applies specifically to Christ. And maybe more generally then, to the people of God. you know, when I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that Christ clearly sees, or excuse me, that Satan clearly sees that Christ is the chief subject of the Psalms. It’s speaking of you in Psalm 91. He grasped that. I don’t know why Christians have trouble grasping it. Satan knows who’s being spoken of in this Psalm. But the crafty devil’s, doesn’t completely quote the verse. Ah, you got to watch these guys, don’t you? He clips off the end of one of the verses, and so a key phrase is left out. Let’s look at Psalm 91 a minute. See if you can catch what is left out here. Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12. For he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. they shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Did you see those missing words? In all thy ways? He didn’t quote that part. This means that Christ would be protected as long as he was doing what God prescribed for him to do. Didn’t he say, I come to do thy will of God. and so while he is doing the will of the Father, there’s divine protection. Jesus is not allowed to freelance here, but must be about his father’s business. This is the way he must pursue. He must not deviate from the way and unnecessarily expose himself to danger like casting himself off the pinnacle the temple. The same would be true for you and I. We’re not to rashly do anything that would put our life in danger. But if Christ had cast him down, he would have been out of his designated way. For he had no right to expose himself like this. And so Satan here purposely misquotes the scripture. Leave something out. in an attempt to deceive Christ to engage what could be self-murdered. Oh, that’s pretty slick, isn’t it? Satan uses the scriptures to tempt Christ. Now, what do we learn from this passage of Scripture? Here’s the situation. What can we learn from? The first is this. There are no safe zones from Satan’s temptations. Matthew’s Gospel speaks of Jerusalem. testimony. It speaks about this in Matthew 4 as the Holy City. And of course, the temple is the house of God. So he’s in the Holy City, and he’s on the House of God. But that doesn’t keep him from temptation. This is where Satan was tempted on this occasion. Now think about that a moment. While you’re at church, even when you are in the midst of worship, it’s very possible. for you to be tempted. You know, the book of Amos gives us a very vivid picture of a danger you cannot escape in chapter 5, verse 19. He says, here’s a man who’s walking along and all of a sudden he’s confronted by a lion in the way. And terrified, he flees running as fast as he can. You can see the sweat pouring down his face. As he runs like a man possessed, to get away from the line. But somehow, rather, he escapes. And while he’s grasping for breath and he rests a moment, suddenly he sees a bear rapidly approaching him. Again facing death, he flees as fast as he can’t possibly run, even though he’s already weary. And the bloodthirsty bears right behind him, gaining on him, he can’t run any further. But he spies a shepherd’s cottage. And he ducts into it, closes the door, bars it closed, and he goes, whew, boy, it was close. And he leans up against the wall of the cottage, exhausted. And he’s thinking about, boy, just got by a lion and a bear today. He begins to relax. He’s very thankful for the shelter of the cottage, and he doesn’t see the serpent that pokes his head out of a crack in the wall and bites him. And he dies. He just can’t escape it. Well, in the same way, you can’t escape Satan’s temptations. There are times we might think, well, I won’t be tempted here. Yes, you may be tempted here. Always have to be on guard against Satan. Satan can attack you when you least expect it. Sometimes he confront you as a roaring lion or as an angry bear. That’s pretty straightforward. but sometimes he just sneaks up on you like a serpent. You don’t realize how crafty he will be in his attack. There are no safe zones from Satan’s temptations. Notice something else here. That Satan is restrained by God in his temptation of you. The devil could not cast Christ down from the temple. He couldn’t push him off the person. the precipice of the temple. So the power of Satan is limited. He can dice you to do evil. He can say, hey, cast yourself down. But he can’t force you to do so. He can’t push you off. In the book of Revelation at one point, Revelation 20, Satan is bound in a chain so that he cannot deceive the nations that he would like to do. This is to a us how God can limit Satan’s power whatever he pleases. Cirtail him. Read the book of Job and you notice how he needs permission from God even to harm Job. Satan has great power and he has designs on Job but he complains in Chapter 1, I can’t get at him. You’ve got a hedge about him. I can’t touch you anything. His household, his great possessions so that he’s healthy and prosperous and has a great family and nothing Satan can do about it. Satan has to get divine permission to touch his household and possessions, to kill his children, to take his flocks, and to take his herds. But even when he gets this permission, remember what God said to him at first, you can’t touch Job. You can take what he has, but you can’t touch him. So Satan does it. Later, God will permit Satan to touch Job’s body. He gives him those boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet and struck with these miserable boils and suffering. He’s limited. He can’t take his life. You can do this much, but you can’t take his life. Now, all of this should be a consolation to you and I. when we read these passages of scripture, in our hour of temptation, God is faithful. He will not suffer you to be tempted above what you’re able to bear. He says, Satan, you can go this far. This is as far as your chain goes. No further with this person or that person. God knows your weaknesses and God knows your strengths. He knows how. how much you are capable of handling. So he limits Satan’s temptations. God is able also to grant you grace in proportion to the greatness of the temptation that you face. Remember the thorn in Paul’s side and how difficult it was and how he pleaded with the Lord to take it away. And the Lord said, I’ll give you more grace. Now Satan is said to be the one who is causing this thorn in his side. Peter, Paul says that, you know, Satan’s been the instigator here. But God says, okay, I’ll give you more grace. You’ll be able to bear it. And so he does. Let us be thankful to God for this. May we pray daily, you know. Part of the pattern of prayer that we’ve been given is to pray lead us not in the temptation. I try to pray that every day because I think, man, how difficult life is as it is. And how easy. Satan can trip us up. And I think it’s something we should recognize. He can keep Satan from getting at us. So know your spiritual weaknesses. Pray to God to hedge you and the limit Satan’s power and ability to harm you. Satan is restrained by God in his temptation. He can’t push them off. He can only tempt him. He can’t push him off. The precipice. The third thing here is you must be aware of those who will lead you astray by twisting the scriptures. Satan and his agents are very crafty. Scripture can be perverted. A key word or key phrase can be changed or left out in such a way as to trick us, change its meaning. This is done far too often. And we should. should be aware of this tactic that comes out in many common situations. Peter writes of those in 2. Peter 316 who are unlearned and unstable, who rest Paul’s epistles and the other scriptures to their own destruction. They twist them. It’s an endeavor to force them to force them to speak something contrary to what they actually say. People twist the scriptures to deceive you, to get you to embrace some type of error. There’s a wealthy woman who was traveling overseas and she saw a bracelet that she really liked and she thought it was irresistible. So she sent a cable home to her husband. Yeah, that was before cell phones back then. It was sent a cable. Which read, have found a wonderful bracelet, period. price $75,000, period. May I buy it? Question mark. Her husband promptly wired back this response. No comma, price too high. Elated. She purchased the bracelet because when the cable operator translated, he left out the comma. And so all she got was no price too high. In other words, nothing’s too good for you, dear. So she went ahead and bought it. Needless to say when she got home, her husband wasn’t too happy with her. It was just a comma, but he made a difference in how she perceived the message. Did Jehovah Witnesses do something similar to this? Have you ever noticed in Luke chapter 23, if you turn with me there for a moment, in verse 43, this is one of those verses, that if you were dealing with Jehovah Witnesses about an intermediate state, what happens when you die, you might appeal to this verse, and they would try to deny what you’re telling them. Jesus is speaking to the thief on the cross, the one who trusted in him. Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, comma, today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Now, the Jehovah witnesses teach soul, extinction. The soul doesn’t survive after the body dies. Now they do teach a final resurrection of the person and like a reestablishment. You don’t go at death, though, you’d be completely non-existent. They do teach that all men will be raised from the dead at the last day, but there’s no intermediate state where the soul exists and awaits the resurrection of the body. You sort of just disappear. That’s what they teach. So you might want to appeal to this verse of scripture and say, well, see, Jesus told the thief that when he died, he would go to paradise. There is an intermediate state, right? Well, the Jehovah Witnesses Bible, the New World translation, attempts to sustain this false doctrine of non-existence after death. So they change the punctuation of Christ’s words, the second words from the cross. Now, the King James. game says, verily I say unto thee, comma, today shall thou be with me in paradise. They changed it to this. Verily I say unto thee today, comma, thou shall be with me in paradise. You notice how they move the comma from before today to after today. So basically, I’m saying to you this day, this, and then someday, in the future, you’ll be with me in paradise. That’s what they want you to believe. So they just move the comma. Now it’s true that in Greek manuscripts there is no punctuation like this. But the change of the Jehovah Witness really doesn’t make any sense. What other day could he possibly be saying these words to the thief? But today, right? I mean, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. To understand why Jesus said today, note what the thief asked in verse 42. He said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Now, the man believed that Jesus would come into his kingdom at the end of the world. He’s thinking, therefore, remember me at that time. And Jesus’ reply our promised him something even better. Today! As soon as you die, you’ll be with me in paradise. There’s no nothing far-fung future here about this. There would be no point in Christ’s words if the thief at the moment of death became nonexistent. So changing the place of the comma was meant to deceive you about the doctrine of the intermediate state. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Jova Wittes says, no, no, that can’t be true. Yes, it is true. That’s what the scripture teaches. And here’s one passage, but this is how they try to get around. Move the comma. These are the kinds of things that are to watch. Look with me at 2. 2. Peter 3.9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise. as some men count slackness, but as long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. I don’t know how many times this passage of scripture has been quoted to me with regard to God’s will on salvation. Armenians commonly reference this verse of Scripture. It’s one of the most common, I think, quoted scripture by the Armenians to combat unconditional election and the doctrine of reprobation because God wants everybody to be saved. Problem is, when they quote it, if you listen to them carefully, they leave out the word us word. For example, John R. Rice in his book predestined for hell. No. He says this, does God really predestinate some people to be saved and predestinate others to go to hell so that they have no free choice? Absolutely not. nobody is predestinated to be saved except as he chooses of his own free will to repent of sin and trust Christ for salvation. No one is predestinated ahead of time to go to hell. Christ died for the sins of the whole world. God is not willing that any should perish. So people have a habit of leaving the usward out of this passage. But the usward are the people that he is referring to when he calls them beloved in verse 1, speaks about the beloved and in verse 14 of this chapter when he says beloved he’s speaking about the us word that’s who he’s speaking of now when we talk about the beloved it doesn’t mean that Peter has beloved them but that God has beloved them it’s similar to what we read in 2nd Thessalonians 2.13 but we are bound to give thanks all way to God for you brother and beloved of the Lord because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation. Here we see the connection between being beloved and being chosen by the Lord. Thus in 1.1, 2, when he writes to those who he’s addressing the same people here, those addressed are called elect according to the foreknowledge or for love of God the Father. and 1 Peter 1 too. The usward then are God’s elect people. And the sense of the whole verse is colored by this. For example, God is long-suffering to usward. God is not willing that any of us, the usward perish. God wants all the usward to come to repentance, and therefore Christ will not return until all the usward. the usward come to salvation. That’s what he’s saying here in this passage of scripture. There is no conflict between that and the doctrine of election or reprobation. It all fits together perfectly. So to take the word usward out is to take away from the scripture, contrary to the command of the word of the word of God, not to diminish it, not to take away from it. And so these are examples of just lay them out before how people can change the meaning of a verse by getting rid of a certain phrase, just as Satan does, here with regard to Christ. Well, let me close this morning by saying this. The Union Pacific Railroad built this elaborate trestle bridge over this huge gorge in the canyon out in the west, then drove a train with twice the payload on it, onto it, let it sit for 24, to prove that it was unbreakable. That was a few. purpose. And so it is with God in Christ’s temptation as Satan discovers. Christ is unbreakable. He shall not fail. What do we learn from this? We learn how Satan tempts you. How subtly he will twist the scriptures to deceive us. So we must be on guard. We must know what the scriptures say and look at them carefully lest we be misled. Let us close with a word of prayer.