CREATED FOR A PURPOSE – LUKE 4:1-13

The baptism of Jesus and the confirmation of Him as the Son of God acknowledged by the descent of the dove leads directly to the temptation of Jesus in the desert or the wilderness.  We need to remember the importance of history for the people to whom Jesus first came. They were a people who had been led to a promised land after 40 years of wandering in the desert or the wilderness. That was a time of purification of the people. Those who would enter the promised land would be people who had depended on no one other than God to sustain them. And that time in the wilderness was to prepare them to be the people of God in the new land, to live according to the commandments and laws of God and reveal that they were guided by the wisdom of God’s Spirit. But time had distanced the people from that wilderness experience. And as they became distant, their desire to listen to the wisdom of God and to God’s prophets had diminished.  John came to the people from the wilderness.  In the wilderness John learned again to trust in the word of God and to listen for God’s guiding voice. His call to the people to be baptized was a call to come out of their spiritual wilderness and to prepare to hear anew the word of God.

Right from the beginning of time, the word of God and the Spirit of God had brought about everything that existed in the world. The people knew that their very existence was due to the creative breath of God – the Spirit of God that came upon them like the wind.    Their heart, their soul, their mind, and their strength came from God. It was the Spirit of God that guided them to all wisdom and truth.

Jesus came to be baptized by the one who had come from the wilderness led by God to call the people to prepare. And as the dove returning to Noah was the sign that the flood was over and there was hope for the people, the Spirit of God descending on Jesus as a dove was a sign that God’s plan for the world and its people was about to be revealed.

And so prepared with the presence of the Spirit of God resting upon him, Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days to prepare himself to begin his ministry of hope and healing and reconciliation.

But note that it is at the end of the 40 days that Jesus faces the tempter and so it is not from a position of strength that Jesus faces the temptations; it is from a position of weakness. I have gone 40 hours without solid food as a fundraiser for charity, but I can’t imagine going 40 days.  40 days represents the 40 years the people of Israel wandered in the desert before reaching the Promised Land and so Jesus spends one day for every year of that journey preparing him for what is to come.

He is then tempted in 3 ways which represent 3 of the ways of the most basic temptations that we as humans can face.  The first temptation tests our willingness to satisfy the physical body.   Remember that Jesus, even though God is wholly present within him, is truly a human being with all the physical needs for survival that that entails. He is being tempted by that which stands opposed to all that is holy and given the choice to betray his calling and invoke His power to change anything into what he desired. “Change these stones into bread,” taunts the devil. Jesus resists citing that the people of God do not live by bread alone. We are more than flesh; we have heart, mind, and spirit.  Even in the midst of our brokenness, we are still a creation of God, and our lives are not complete simply as physical creations.

The second temptation is one of power. Imagine being able to be in control of the whole world. But to gain this means selling your soul to the devil. For Jesus to have accepted the offer of the devil in exchange for worshiping him would have been a betrayal of who he was. It would have meant that the mission of Jesus to renew the relationship between God and the people would have been over.  Yet often people have done just this. They have taken the bait, so to speak, and found themselves beholden to another person or organization, that controls their heart and soul, causing them great emotional and spiritual turmoil. As Christians, we are thankful that Jesus resisted this temptation, and we need to be mindful of how we respond to the challenges in our lives that we do not fall prey to the wiles of those who would cause us to put something or someone before God and our life in Him.

The third temptation Jesus faced was that of forcing the hand of God. The devil encouraged Jesus to reveal himself by forcing the angels to save him.  Jesus knew that to do this was wrong in some many ways. Key among them, though, was his knowledge that to give in to this temptation, would reveal a greater desire to prove himself than to be the instrument of salvation for the nation. If any of these temptations had been successful, the whole plan of God for the salvation and renewal of the people would have been lost.

It is only after these tests have been passed that Jesus can begin to reveal himself. For it is only now that he has proved beyond a doubt that the frailties of the human condition can be overcome, and that humanity can be saved.  Jesus can now begin to show the nation of Israel and the world that indeed he is the Messiah, the chosen one of God, who will lead the people from their spiritual wilderness into the eternal kingdom of their God.

Next week we will hear the Scripture from Luke where he returns to Nazareth and enters the synagogue. When he is asked to read from the scroll of Isaiah, he goes straight to the place where the prophet speaks of the mission of the one sent by God.  Those words from Isaiah become the mission statement of Jesus.  Those words will guide him over the time of his ministry and be ever evident in his interactions with the people. Those words will gain him followers and enemies.

The poor in spirit would hear good news, news that would change their lives and raise them up. Those who had been captive to false ways of living would be set free by the truth of Jesus’ message.  Those who had been blinded by lies and falsehoods would see the truth and those who had suffered under the thumb of another would find freedom. There would be a year of jubilee in the nation, a year never seen before.

Jesus would turn the world upside down. People’s lives would be changed.  There would be physical healings, spiritual healings. There would be physical confrontations and spiritual confrontations.  Yet all would be in accordance with the plan for the salvation of the people as determined by God. Jesus was the messenger of that salvation, the face of God to the people.

Today, wherever the Good News is made known to people, wherever the Spirit of God continues to be acknowledged and welcomed, people find hope and freedom. People find a truth that nothing else can come close to and they experience a newness of life that is firm and lasting.

The One we acknowledge as our Lord and Saviour is that same Jesus Christ who dedicated Himself to prepare people to receive the fullness of God’s grace and mercy, to restore broken humanity to that relationship with God for which they were created. Let us be thankful that He resisted temptation and that He embraced His mission for in that we all find peace, hope and salvation not only for today but for all eternity.

Amen