Maybe you were trying to be gracious. Maybe you were going to check on it when you got home. Maybe something
stuck in your head and you made a mental note, but forgot to follow through. Maybe you’d like to know what I’m talking
about.
I made a major mistake last Sunday in recounting a Bible story. Only one person came to me to correct me. I got the
story of Ruth completely wrong. I don’t want to burst your “Pastor Mike” bubble – actually I DO want to burst it – I’m
not the one to trust implicitly. The Lord Jesus is who we trust. But I got Ruth’s story wrong. It will be easy today to say,
“Yeah, I knew it.” But did you really? Not the person who talked to me – but can someone share with us what I got
wrong?
What I said about Ruth is not what the Bible says. Her husband died (I got that part right), but then I said that she left her
mother-in-law and went out on her own and became poor. This is not true – she STAYED with her mother-in-law. They
both became destitute. Maybe you heard that and decided to be gracious. Thank you if that’s what happened. But I don’
t think that was it for most of us. What is kind of scary is that some of us may have thought – “If PASTOR Mike says it, it
must be true.”
I really do hate to burst the bubble – but we have to. We are here at Plattsmouth Bible Church, part of the Berean
Fellowship of Churches. We take our Berean name from Acts 17:11 – the Bereans were more fair-minded than those in
Thessalonica in that they received the word (from Paul) with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out
whether these things were so. If you EVER hear erroneous teaching come out of my mouth regarding what the Bible says
– or out of ANYONE’S mouth here at Plattsmouth Bible Church – you not only have my permission, but also the
EXPECTATION to challenge it. I will hear you – if someone takes the step of obedience to speak up to confront error, I
better listen.
Jesus shows us the value of knowing God’s Word for ourselves. And as we look at Him today in a VERY difficult
circumstance, I firmly believe that He knew God’s Word NOT because He was God, but because He was MAN. You
hear me say it often and I see it again in the passage we are looking at today – even though Jesus WAS fully God,
according to Philippians 2, He laid aside His God powers temporarily and became fully human while He lived on earth. I
don’t think Jesus ever cheated and pulled out His God powers to make it through human life. WE can’t – we have to live
fully human – and He came to show us how to live this human life.
As we continue in our series “A REAL Human Life” in the Gospel of Luke, we are going to see Jesus in the middle of a
very trying time. Before we open the Word of God, let’s ask our Teacher for His help. PRAY
Turn to Luke 4. What we talked about last week was how God the Father proclaimed that Jesus was His beloved Son in
whom He was well pleased. Jesus was the kind of human being God had always desired human beings to be – God was
pleased with the Man Jesus. And God feels the same about us as we follow Jesus. The next thing that happens is what we
find in early chapter 4. Let’s read – Luke 4:1,2. READ. The opening words of verse 1 show clearly that Jesus was living
the same kind of human life you and I have to live. If Jesus lived on earth as GOD, there would be no question whether He
was filled with the Spirit. But Luke, inspired by God, mentions that Jesus the Man was filled with the Spirit.
After being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus was immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness. That is interesting
considering the next verse – “being tempted for forty days by the devil.” Jesus, the real human being, the Son of God in the
flesh, was led BY THE SPIRIT into the wilderness and, it looks like He was led there TO BE tempted by the devil. Jesus
had just proclaimed His devotion to following the Lord with His life by being baptized by John. He had publicly proclaimed
His identification with God’s ways and God’s program. So the Spirit of God immediately puts Him in a place where His
devotion will be tested.
What do you think of that? Does that sound like something God does? People commit to Him and He puts them in places
where their commitment will be tried. Actually, I think that sounds a LOT like what God does. God is looking for fully
devoted followers – people who trust Him and do what He says. How many of us, when we feel like we have stepped out
in faith and believed God have been hit by the enemy almost immediately? God gives us opportunities to put our money
where our mouth is. And just like Adam, Jesus took His testing straight from the father of lies.
Hebrews 4:15. READ. Jesus was tempted in EVERY WAY as we are – EVERY way. For at least 500 and maybe
nearly 1000 hours straight He fought off temptation. Have you ever doubted Hebrews 4:15, that Jesus was tempted in
every way as we are? Seeing the amount of time Jesus was face to face with Satan, I don’t doubt that Satan threw
everything he had at Him. And Hebrews 4:15 says that He did not sin. Remember that this was not the only time Jesus
would be tempted. As we read through the Gospel of Luke, we’ll see opportunity for pride and women and hatred and
revenge and a lot of other sins. But Jesus did life the way God intended ALL of us to do it. Without sin – ever. And Jesus
also did it without ever pulling out His God powers – He did it as a human being. How can it happen? How did He do it?
Let’s look at the 3 situations Luke tells about after the 40 days.
Luke 4:2b-4. READ. The whole previous 40 days Jesus was concentrating on remaining pure and denying Himself. He
did not even eat. But after 40 days, He noticed He was hungry. So the devil tried to capitalize on this weakness. “Make
Yourself some bread if you are the Son of God.” Nourishment of our bodies is one thing we all consider necessary for life.
Jesus had been 1 month and 10 days without food – I think it could have been considered acceptable. But Satan was
trying to trap the Lord Jesus. “Make Yourself some bread, Son of God.” Jesus responds to the devil himself with the
Word of God. “Man shall not live only on bread, but on every word from God.” This is Deuteronomy 8:3. Satan, you
can try to tempt Me to fight off this hunger by doing something only God can do – but I came to show mankind that it is
God’s Word that sustains us – even when we’re starving. It is God Himself who provides for us when we have nothing.
You have it wrong, Satan, if you think it is only bread that keeps us alive. In order to combat the enemy of our souls, Jesus
used the Word of God.
Luke 4:5-8. READ. This one actually kind of makes me laugh. I’m really surprised Jesus didn’t laugh out loud. Here is
the Son of God – the Second Person of the Trinity – living in human flesh. He has temporarily laid aside His God abilities,
but He hasn’t ceased being God. He hasn’t ceased being the Ruler and Creator of the universe – the WHOLE universe.
And neither has He ceased to be the ETERNAL God – even though He lived IN time while He was on earth as a human
being, He remained eternal. And Satan “tempts” Him with a few plots of land on a tiny speck of dust if He will only
proclaim Satan as god.
But Jesus didn’t pull out His God-ness here either. Jesus HIMSELF is worthy of all the worship of all humanity and all
nature and the whole universe. He responded to Satan’s lame attempt with God’s Word again – two passages from
Deuteronomy (6:13 and 10:20). You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. It really wasn’t even
about the ownership of the universe. Jesus the human being trusted God and did what He said – worship only Me. Satan
had nothing to offer in comparison to the true God. And from His knowledge of God’s Word, Jesus realized that and
rejected the temptation.
Satan tries one more lame ploy to take Jesus off course. It had worked with Adam, but it did not work with Jesus. Luke 4:
9-11. READ. OK, Son of God, let’s see if God REALLY loves You (this sounds like what he did with Adam and Eve –
“has God really said you will die?”). Satan even uses God’s Word to try to trap Jesus into a bad choice – just like he did
with Adam and Eve. Without looking in your margin, does anyone know off the top of your head where to find the 2
verses Satan used on Jesus? I didn’t either – they are both in Psalm 91.
Listen carefully – Satan knows God’s Word better than you and I do. Our enemy knows our playbook, our instruction
manual, our plan of battle, SHOULDN’T WE? If he is not afraid to try to use God’s Word against the Son of God, what
makes you and me think he will take it easier on us? If we don’t know what the Bible says – and I mean a little more than
our T-shirt mentality “knowing what the Bible says” – we are sitting ducks for Satan. There are thousands of people in the
world RIGHT NOW sitting in mainline denomination churches or in cult worship centers or out communing with nature who
are LOST because they have been lead astray, not knowing God’s Word.
Jesus responds to Satan – who has taken Psalm 91 out of context – Jesus responds with God’s Word IN context. From
Deuteronomy 6:16 – You shall not tempt the Lord your God. God promises our protection, but God also will let us suffer
the consequences of our poor choices. I could throw Myself off the temple, Satan, but God is not a circus performer. He
is not required to overcome my idiot ideas to prove Himself. I will not tempt Him.
In these 3 circumstances we see that Jesus turned to God’s Word for deliverance from temptation by Satan. We don’t
know, but I have to assume that for the previous 40 days Jesus used the Word of God as His first defense against the
onslaught of Satan’s temptations. So Jesus had to KNOW God’s Word. Well, you might say, that’s easy for Him – it’s
HIS WORD. That is true, it is His Word, but as with the rest of His human life, I don’t think He used His God powers to
make it through. He emptied Himself of those according to Philippians 2. So for Jesus the human being to know God’s
Word like that, what must have happened? HE STUDIED.
That begs the question – DO YOU KNOW GOD’S WORD WELL ENOUGH TO RECOGNIZE ERROR? I realize
that not all of us learn the same and not all of us have hours to pour ourselves into Bible study. But I can tell us this – if you
have been a believer for a number of years and you hear yourself throw out the excuse “I don’t really know the Bible very
well,” it is TIME to do something about that. We are going to see the extreme value of it today from the Lord Jesus. If
you don’t know God’s Word for yourself, how will you know that what is being spoken is correct? If you heard me talk
about Ruth last Sunday and you didn’t realize it was wrong, what else may you not realize? That information wasn’t really
that vital to know.
Verse 2 says that Jesus was tempted or tested for 40 days. Many of us have read about this testing and think it involved
only the three things referred to here. The three things we see in the following verses were not part of the 40 days of testing
and temptation. For every day for 40 days, Jesus was tempted by the devil. Even if the temptations only came during the
daylight hours – which I HIGHLY doubt, Satan uses darkness for his stuff – that would still be at least 500 hours of
constant temptation. And if it WAS day and night, that would be nearly 1000 hours of constant fighting the flesh.
Do YOU study God’s Word? You may read the Daily Bread. That’s good, but that’s not studying the Bible. You may
listen to Christian music. That’s good, but that’s not studying the Bible. You may listen to the Bible on CD. Great – but
that’s not studying. You may be involved in a group that is studying a book by a Christian author. Good – but that’s not
the Bible. In every known case of Satan attempting to draw Jesus off course, we see the Lord Jesus respond with God’s
Word. Are you going to have a snowball’s chance of overcoming Satan’s attacks by YOUR “study” plan? I should have
warned you when we started, watch your toes, because they are going to get stepped on. I have been studying John the
Baptist’s preaching style.
Do you bring your Bible to church? Do you open it at home? Do you meditate on it on your own? Are you involved in
studying it on your own and with others? Do God’s Words come out of your mouth because they are in your heart? How
do people learn best? When they have the most exposure to something. We retain:
10 percent of what we read
20 percent of what we hear
30 percent of what we see
50 percent of what we hear and see
70 percent of what we say
90 percent of what we say and do
If those stats are accurate, we ought to see a lot more impact from Bible believing followers of Jesus. Jesus lived out God’
s Word because He read it, He heard it, He saw it, He said it and He DID it. And He didn’t use His God powers to do all
that – He lived the way humans are supposed to live.
Satan tried to twist God’s Word with JESUS. What do you think he will try to do with you? We CANNOT be followers
of Jesus and be ignorant of His Word. How can we follow if we don’t know what He says to do? WAIT WAIT WAIT –
I’m not a good reader. I can’t study. I don’t have time. I don’t understand it. I’m not smart enough. I gotta watch my
favorite show that night. ENTER YOUR EXCUSE HERE. I’m sorry – is there a GOD OF THE UNIVERSE OUT
THERE who made you and knows you and can HELP YOU? Has He not put you in a church family where people will
take the time to study with you and help you learn? Did He rescue you from sin only to make you feel better? I don’t think
our little excuses are going to cut it with God. We need to trust Him and DO what He says.
Luke 4:13. READ. Satan ended every temptation – EVERY temptation. There was not one area of life that Satan did not
try to entrap Jesus. And when Satan saw he had made no headway, he departed UNTIL an opportune time, it says. He
came back. He came back to try to mess up the LORD JESUS. Satan does not give up – he didn’t give up on Jesus and
he won’t give up on you. How are you going to withstand him?
By my sheer will power I will withstand him. How well has your will served you to this point? Have you lost weight?
Have you stopped swearing? Have you been driving the speed limit? Have you been working out? If you are trusting in
your will power to defeat Satan, YOU are defeated.
I’ll trust in my family. My grandmother was a strong believer. My children are so adorable – God loves them. My wife
does all the God-stuff. My relative goes to some effective church. Really? Are we talking about people who are just like
you and me – sinners? Are we talking about people who fail like us? Is Satan shaking in his boots about them? No, he’s
not.
I’m going to trust in my physique, my intelligence, my station in life. Jesus talks about a farmer who thought that way in
Luke 12. He was getting ready to tear down his old barns and build more barns to store his harvest and the Lord said to
him, “You fool, this very night your soul will be required of you.” Those things can change in a moment. Curtis Larson, a
senior at PHS, found that out a couple of weeks ago. One moment he was the star football player and rated wrestler, the
next moment he was a guy on crutches for the rest of the year. And the older you get, the less you can trust your own
abilities.
I find my strength in music. Satan is not afraid of Christian music – in fact he USES it to keep us out of God’s Word.
“There are Bible verses in the songs I like.” Satan used Bible verses to tempt Jesus. Music has impact on our emotions
and we can learn things as we listen. But it has no power to deliver us from the attacks of our enemy and to make eternal
changes in us.
It is only GOD’S WORD we can trust and rely on and turn to. The Living Word of God – the Lord Jesus Christ –
showed us how God’s Word works in real life. We need to study Him. We study Him by opening up the written Word of
God, the Bible. Well, we are going through the Gospel of Luke – so we ARE studying Him. Jesus was bombarded for at
least 500 hours straight – do you think He was able to withstand that by sitting through a church service for an hour and a
half a week? That’s like eating one meal a week and then thinking you are healthy. And even that one meal is kind of
gross. Would you like to take in your nutrition the way you take your Bible feeding. I’ll take the bite and I’ll chew it up
and my saliva will start the breakdown process and then I’ll spit it in your mouth. I don’t think so.
On your outlines you have some passages to review to see the value of God’s Word. I encourage all of us to read those
passages and think about what God is telling us and to respond. By the way, God’s Word is not only valuable for
defeating Satan. It is valuable for everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Do you want to live a godly life?
Do you want the most out of life? I don’t know if God could have made it much simpler. At Plattsmouth Bible Church we
will never back down from the importance of reading, knowing and studying and APPLYING God’s Word for ourselves.
The REAL human being did life that way and we want to be just like Him.