In this section Luke explains how Satan attempted to stop Jesus’ mission before it started.
Where do you look to find your identity?
Or asked another way, who do you think you are?
Our friends and neighbors, our sons and daughters are being taught that in order to find their true identity they must themselves. And having looked deeply within to find themselves they must be true to what they have discovered. They must be authentic. So for example if a boy finds himself attracted to other boys he is told that he is homosexual and that to find freedom he must follow his feelings. Or perhaps a girl, in former times known as a tomboy, is taught that she is actually a male trapped in a female body. In order to fulfill her true identity she must take puberty-blocking drugs and undergo surgery. But seeking gender-reassignment surgery cannot cure adolescent emotional confusion. Or, similarly, a spouse, looking within and feeling unfulfilled in their marriage, may believe that they are justified in abandoning their family and seeking a divorce.
But relying on the temptations of culture or peer pressure to look within to find yourself is a cruel lie. Looking within to discover your true identity is nothing more than the old Gnostic trick of Satan.
As we read this next section, notice how the devil challenges Christ’s identity: If you are the Son of God… Rather than looking within and giving into his feelings, fears, or his hunger, Jesus finds his identity in the Word of God.
Like Christ, we should all look to God’s Word, not to the temptations of our wicked, twisted, troubled culture, to find our identity, for we are God’s creation, made in his image. As Saint Augustine wrote in his book, Confessions:
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
Or as John Calvin wrote in, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:
Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self. Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating God to scrutinize himself.
We weren’t designed to find our identity by looking within but by looking to our Creator God. Unfortunately, humanity is instinctively repelled by any thought of looking for our identity in Him, Romans 1:18-30, and so, left to ourselves, we look for identity anywhere but the living God. And in the modern secular West, that search for identity has turned inwards. Even though it’s starting to bear bitter fruit.
(Brian Rosner, How To Find Yourself: Why Looking Inward Is Not The Answer, Crossway)
Luke 4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’” Deuteronomy 8:3
5 The devil, leading him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 The devil said to him, “I will give you all this authority, and their glory, for it has been delivered to me; and I give it to whomever I want. 7 If you therefore will worship before me, it will all be yours.”
8 Jesus answered him, “Get behind me Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’” (Deuteronomy 16:13)
9 He led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
‘He will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you;’
11 and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone.’” (Psalm 91:11)
12 Jesus answering, said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” (Deuteronomy 6:16)
13 When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until another time.
In preparation for his ministry the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where, like our first father, Adam, he encountered Satan in a cosmic spiritual battle for mankind: Light against darkness, truth verses lies.
Even as his public ministry began Jesus knew what was in store for Him. He knew why He came to earth. He came to die, taking on himself the wrath of the Father, the wrath that we deserved, so that we might be granted life. Knowing this burden that Jesus carried, the dragon, the father of lies, Satan, tried his best to tempt Jesus away from His mission.
In the first temptation Satan attacked Jesus at his point of weakness… “Look Jesus, you are starving. You have fasted for 40 days. If you are really the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe, command this stone to become bread.”
Jesus responded by quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”
In the second temptation Satan offered Jesus a shortcut. Jesus had come to earth to do the will of his father, John 6:38 offering Himself as the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world. John 1:29 Satan lied and offered Christ an easy way to accomplish the same goal saying, “I have a better, alternative plan, If you therefore will worship before me… I will give to you… all the kingdoms of the world.” Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.”
Seeing that he had been rebuffed twice with Scripture, in the third temptation Satan changed tactics and quoted Scripture himself, appealing to Psalm 91 to trick Jesus into obeying him. Notice, however, that Satan only quoted the part about angels protecting Jesus, while conveniently leaving out the next verse about Jesus trampling on the serpent. Psalm 91:13
Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”
While the first man, Adam, succumbed to temptation, the second Man, Christ, 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, overcame temptation. Through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, through the obedience of the one man many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19 Facing defeat, Satan departed. As Christ will go on to explain in another context, in defeat Satan had been bound. His days of free reign on the earth were coming to an end.
First, we must realize that, like Jesus, we are all the target of temptation. And as followers of Jesus, we should expect to be tempted by Satan in the same ways that our Lord was tempted. We will be tempted at points of weakness and vulnerability.
Second, we will be tempted to take shortcuts. Christians all have a choice to make. We can follow God’s law of liberty, James 1:25; the ways of God based on his perfect character that bring blessing and life both now and into eternity. Or we can take the deceptive shortcut offered by Satan and follow the ways of the world, the system designed by and operating on the lies of Satan. Going along with those pleasures and passions pursued by unbelievers may make sense in the short term because they offer us acceptance, a sense of belonging, esteem, wealth, and friendship. But friendship with the world means enmity against God. The secular gods will always fail. And, in fact, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. James 4:4
Third, and finally, we can expect Satan to twist Scripture. Jesus’ brother warned, “Be on the lookout for ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality.” Jude 1:4 We must realize that there are teachers who misuse Scripture to encourage compromise with the world, introducing the teachings of the father of lies into the Church.
How are we to deal with these daily temptations?
First, we must understand that, those whom God effectually calls he freely justifies… by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting them as righteous… by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them. (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 9) Though we will struggle against sin, Romans 7:19, we can rest knowing that God placed our sins upon Christ and simultaneously credited us with Christ’s righteousness.
Second, in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, 2 Timothy 1:7 we are to follow the teaching and example of Jesus. We are to counter the lies of the world and Satan as Jesus did, by relying on the Word of God. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11
More than any other prohibition in the Old and New Testaments, God warns against cultural assimilation – its practices and its idols. Scripture repeatedly commands that we reject the thinking, answers, and gods of the nations around us. God’s First Command is, You shall have no other gods before me, and God incessantly commands Israel both to reject the customs of the neighboring nations and to abhor their practices.
But like Israel we pant after the panache of the nations. And the narratives, psalms, and prophets constantly rebuke Israel for their frenzy for that worldly assimilation. Psalm 106 reprimands Israel for because: They did not destroy the peoples, as the Lord commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did.
(Sam Williamson, Chasing Lovers, beliefsoftheheart.com)