READING IN LUKE 4
READING IN LUKE 4
The previous chapters show what the Lord was before the descent upon Him of the Spirit; a Man out of heaven. Personally the Lord was “out of heaven”, a divine Person; perfection was there, so that the Spirit had nothing to form in Him. We need to be formed, and this takes place after we get the Holy Spirit. The earlier chapters show that perfection was in Christ before the anointing; but He takes up the service of God in the power of the Spirit. He is in man’s place, and He carries out the divine will in the same power that is given to believers. John presents the divine side, but in Luke the Man
[p. 17] is before us; the Lord is not acting simply as a divine Person, but as Man in the power of the Holy. Spirit. “Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness”. He is in the position of obedience, and He does not act in virtue of what He is in His own Person; He is governed by the Spirit, so the path that He marks out in this gospel is open to believers. It is the path of a man taking the ground of obedience, led by the Spirit. At the end of the gospel the disciples are told to tarry in Jerusalem “until ye be endued with power from on high”. There was to be the continuation of the heavenly character in them, for they should have the same power that He had.
The temptations serve to bring out more fully the character of the Man that had now appeared, and was here under God’s eye. Satan had resort to “every temptation”, but all were unavailing to allure the Lord from the path of obedience. Believers are tempted now after the same manner. Adam was tempted and he succumbed. Satan counts on finding in man the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life, but none of these were present in Christ. The forty days in the wilderness no doubt alluded to the forty years of Israel’s journeying there. There was a complete time of testing in each case, but how different the results! And it has to be noted that while Israel was with God in the wilderness, Christ was there to be tempted of Satan, and He was with the wild beasts, Mark 1: 13.
The Lord fasted during the forty days, and the devil takes advantage of this to attack Him. “If thou be Son of God, command this stone that it may be made bread”. To do this would take the Lord out of man’s divinely appointed place, and moreover it would show that He was not living on divinely appointed food. The adversary’s attack is [p. 18] met in divine perfection, but in man as simply maintaining man’s place as governed entirely by God’s word. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”. What man’s true food is, is thus clearly indicated, and it affords a most important consideration. Elsewhere the Lord says, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work”. This was an entirely new kind of meat for man! Satan’s suggestion is met by a quotation from Deuteronomy which is connected with the manna.
In the wilderness the people were suffered to hunger, and God fed them with manna — “which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live”, Deuteronomy 8: 3. The manna was an extraordinary food; it was wholly foreign to nature. In truth it was food from heaven; something altogether new for terrestrial beings. It will be found that God provides food for us calculated to build up our constitutions to meet the exigencies of the circumstances in which we may be, To be in the wilderness for God we need to live on what is heavenly. It was wonderful that God should open “the doors of heaven” and rain down manna. He gave them “the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels’ food”, Psalm 78: 24. It was a food that heavenly beings only knew about. The Lord taught the disciples to pray. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. It is the kind of food that is known there.
The Lord introduced an appetite for it on earth. Israel did not relish it, but it is the food of Christians, and it prepares us for heaven. If you feed on the food of angels you become like them. They are marked by obedience; they do the will of God. No matter what they are told to do, they do it;
so the Lord says, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The gospels present the food of angels, especially this gospel. In the second chapter they are seen in raptures of delight over the birth of Christ, the One in whom the will of God should be carried out in the highest way.
The manna has reference to the carrying out of God’s will in a contrary scene, hence the gospels present it to us: there we see Christ maintaining God’s will where all was opposed. The bread of life in John 6 presents another thought, and the old corn of the land of Canaan still another. Each refers to Christ. In the type the whole camp was dependent on the manna that came down from heaven; now Christians are fed by it. We are in this world for God’s will, and we are sustained, not by anything the world can offer, but by heavenly food. We feed on Christ, finding Him in every circumstance in which we may be found as in obedience to God’s word.
In meeting the enemy the Lord quotes from the book of Deuteronomy. Although a wilderness book, Deuteronomy had in view the preparation of the people for the land of Canaan. It recalls the law which had been given to them for the wilderness, but the law presented in the spirit of it, rather than the letter; the first commandment here is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”. Deuteronomy was spoken on the plains of Moab; that is, it comes in after the brazen serpent and the springing well; hence the instruction is of a different character from what was given before. In this book the people are typically in that relationship with God which involves that the flesh is condemned and set aside in the death of Christ, and the Spirit possessed by the believer.
In Numbers we see how the wilderness experience had done its work: it had brought to light what the [p. 20] flesh really is. The people spake against God and against Moses. This was a terrible exposure of what the flesh is, and the wilderness journey brought it out. “The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart”, Deuteronomy 8. It was a painful lesson for them, but we all have to learn it. God walks with us so that we may have moral power to refuse the flesh as the wilderness conditions bring it into evidence. In the death of Christ God has dealt with the flesh, setting it aside judicially; as we accept this and recognise the Holy Spirit there is no more murmuring; for murmuring comes from the flesh. We are now prepared for the instruction afforded in Deuteronomy, which has Canaan in view.
Here the Lord refuses everything that is not according to God’s will. Satan’s suggestions would divert from this. The epistle to the Romans contemplates the Christian being governed by this principle. In chapter 12 he is to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”. In quoting from Deuteronomy 8, the Lord says nothing about the necessity for the wilderness journey. It was not really needed in His case; but if He was tested and suffered to hunger, this only brought perfection to light. As in the wilderness, He is on Deuteronomy ground, which it took Israel forty years to reach. The Lord was led of the Spirit in it; Israel did not come to recognise the Spirit till they were coming out of it. Christ came out of it as He went into it, in the power of the Spirit.
It is wonderful to see how human perfection shines in Christ in every temptation. He is tested in regard to food, as Adam was; and He is tested in regard to government, as Noah was; and, lastly, in regard to the house of God, as Israel was; but, in all these, infinite perfection is seen in Man. It is complete [p. 21] triumph. And Satan, completing every temptation, departs from Him for a season. The strong man is bound, and now the Stronger than he goes about to spoil his goods.