Confrontation in Nazareth (6)

 

 

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry” (Luke 4:1 – 2).

 

“And he [the devil] led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here” (Luke 4:9).

 

“And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff” (Luke 44:29).

 

In order to return to Nazareth, Jesus must go into the Wilderness. To proclaim and claim the inheritance and fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Luke 4:17 – 21), Jesus must face and overcome temptation. Here is a replay of Adam and Eve in the Garden, here the Last Adam, the Second Man, turns away the serpent’s, “Has God said?” with, “It is written.” (Also, compare Genesis 3:6 with 1 John 2:16.)

 

As you and I were in Adam, so are we in Jesus Christ.

 

Let us note that while Jesus refused to throw Himself down from the temple (Luke 4:9), that the devil sought another way to throw Jesus down, by using the confrontation in Nazareth, by using the people in Jesus’ own hometown synagogue (Luke 4:29).

 

When God brought Israel through the waters of the Red Sea they entered the Wilderness, here they were presented with an opportunity to worship God, obey Him, and enter their inheritance for the glory of God and the blessing of all nations. This entailed worship centered around the Presence of God in the Tabernacle and allowing God to transform them into His Holy People.

 

After passing through the waters of baptism Jesus enters the Wilderness, and during the three recorded temptations, Jesus responds to the devil with the Word of God as spoken to Israel in the Wilderness; Luke 4:4 from Dt. 8:3, Luke 4:8 from Dt. 6:13, and Luke 4:12 from Dt. 6:16. Jesus will not wander in the Wilderness for 40 years, He will encounter temptation for 40 days after passing through the waters, and then He will begin His public ministry of blessing the world, as Israel ought to have done. What Israel failed to do, Jesus will begin to do, and He continues to bless the world as the Head of His Body, the Body of Christ.

 

Jesus inaugurated a Temple on Pentecost that continues to live and grow, a holy Temple that is making its appearance from the unseen realm into the seen, that is filling the entire earth. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit and the Word speak.

 

Some observations:

 

When we are preparing candidates for baptism, are we teaching them about the Wilderness? The New Creation is challenged by the enemy, he hates New Life, the Life of God which he has repudiated. Thank God that we have His Word as our refuge and defense! Thank God that His Word is sure and certain and unshakeable.

 

When a player makes a football team, when he is placed on the roster, when he is called into a game, it means that he will be “hit,” he will be challenged, he will be tested. Sometimes he will see the “hit” coming, other times he will not. Sometimes he can protect his teammates, sometimes they can protect him; no matter what, the team of which he is a member is in the game together. The team will win or lose together.

 

When we act and speak as if baptism is an entrance into a life of ease and comfort, as if our lives will be comfortable and that we have only ourselves to think about, we fail to equip professing Christians and call them to Biblical discipleship (Mark 8:34 – 38). Baptism, among other things, is a call to mission and spiritual warfare, a warfare that includes temptation. If the enemy cannot stop us from escaping the slavery of Egypt, he will try to stop us from entering our inheritance in Jesus Christ.

 

Jesus was hungry then He faced the final three temptations (Luke 4:2). Hunger is an overriding human condition, dominating all other thoughts and desires, affecting our total being. Hunger can lead us to irrational thoughts and actions, to desperate behavior, to the justifying of unspeakable evil. A state of extreme hunger can lead us either down into the darkness of the abyss or raise us up into Light of Heaven. Shall we live by bread in our desperation, or will we live by the Word of God?

 

Surely it is reasonable to want bread when we are hungry. Surely if we have the power to turn stones into bread we ought to do it, after all, God made our bodies and our bodies need bread; don’t we want to care for our bodies in a reasonable manner? If we are the daughters and sons of God, ought we not to exercise our prerogatives for His glory? If we can strengthen our bodies with bread, surely we can better resist temptation.

 

As dominating as hunger can be, there is a greater hunger that we are called to experience, and that is a hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6, spoken by Jesus shortly after the Wilderness).

 

This does not make sense to people, it doesn’t make sense to the world or to the professing church, at least the professing church in the West. The professing church wants to have the world along with salvation, it wants to have ease and pleasure and not the Cross of suffering (is there any other Cross?). We want what Bonhoeffer terms “cheap grace” and are offended when it’s suggested that we are to deny ourselves for Jesus Christ and others, that we are to lay down our lives for others.

 

The Wilderness is not the time to consider our options, it is the time when we declare that we have no options, we have only Jesus. If we have not confronted the enemy and temptation in the Wilderness, if the Word of God has not been established in our hearts amid the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, our confrontation in Nazareth may not go well for we will be uncertain in our reading of Isaiah, uncertain in our identify, uncertain in our mission. That is, the Wilderness is a preparation for our confrontation in Nazareth.

 

Jesus will continue to face the temptation of self-preservation, of denying the Cross and His sacrificial mission. Consider that just before the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter attempted to convince Jesus to avoid the Cross, with Jesus rebuking him, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Matthew 16:23).

 

On the Cross the temptation continues in the form of the crowds and the religious leaders:

 

 

“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40).

 

“Let Him come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him” (Matthew 27:42).

 

The temptation for self-preservation is all around us. Jesus faced it directly from the devil in the Wilderness. He faced it from His beloved Peter. He faced it from the crowds and the religious leaders. Do we really think that we will not face it from those close to us who want to spare us from the Cross? That we will not face it from the enemy? That we will not be assaulted with it by the world and its leaders? From popular Christianity and its leaders?

 

Can we not see that so much of what passes for contemporary Christianity is all about me, me, me? All about our “best lives now”? All about making our lives better, rather than following Jesus Christ and loving Him with all that we have and all that we are and living for others?

 

Does our hunger for the world eclipse our hunger for the Word of God?

 

We want to experience the Day of Pentecost without experiencing the suffering and persecution that follows that glorious Day.

 

When we know Jesus as our Living Bread, nothing else will satisfy. When we hunger for Him, we see the deceit and foolishness of all substitutes…indeed, we see all else as poison and death to our souls.

 

“I AM the Bread of Life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst…I Am the Living Bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh” (John 6:35, 51).