I vividly remember as a child loving dot-to-dot books. At first glance the page would just look like a series of dots with numbers beside them, but if you joined the dots and followed the numbers a picture would start to emerge.
Inspired by the Spirit, the gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have left us with ancient biographies of Jesus which invite us to join dots throughout scripture to give us a vivid and fulsome picture of who God is, the nature of reality, what it is to be human, the kingdom of God, what it is to enter this kingdom, and our present and future hope.
Lent
As part of our Lenten series, this week we want to reflect on a passage in which, if we join some dots, the picture painted for us is enriched.
The passage is Luke 4: 1 – 13, where Luke describes Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Spirit, and where, after forty days without food, the Devil appears to him to tempt him at this physical low point.
Don’t rush …focus
Why don’t you pause for a moment, grab your Bible (physical or online) and prayerfully and slowly read this passage.
There is a temptation (see what I did there😊) with such passages to rush to thinking about its practical application for our lives, but as Iain recently reminded us, we need to slow down and pay attention. To rush to a personal application is to miss the picture Luke wants us to focus on. Only when our focus aligns with Luke’s can we then think of what this means for us and what the implications are for us.
Jesus is the focus
Luke’s focus, is of course, Jesus. The significance of the events of Luke 4:1 – 13 is because of who is involved. Jesus, fully God and fully human, is victorious over the devil and his lies and deceit.
First Dot
If when reading this account your mind goes to Genesis 3, then you are joining dots Luke intends for us to join.
The devil has a really limited playbook. Really, all he knows to do is twist words to try and leverage enough doubt to get people to act in a way contrary to what God has promised or instructed.
In Christ, Adam and Eve’s disobedience is undone and reversed. The theological word for this is recapitulated. Jesus, in refusing to believe the devil’s lies and act upon them, recapitulates the disobedience in the garden.
Ambrose, the 4th century bishop of Millian, put it brilliantly when he wrote:
“as Adam is cast out of paradise into the wilderness, so Christ, the new Adam, goes into the wilderness on our behalf, then to come forth from that temptation to lead us back to paradise.”
Amen, hallelujah, thank you Jesus.
More dots to join
If Luke wants us to see the connection with the garden, then his highlighting that this takes place in the wilderness, and his noting 40 days of fasting presents other dots for us to connect to build up the picture he wants to see.
Forty
Israel after their liberation from Egypt spent 40 years in the wilderness. They did so because of lack of trust in God’s promises and provision for them. In his extreme hunger Jesus does not give into the temptation to satisfy his needs by misusing the miraculous but rather trusts in God’s timing, promises, provision and purposes.
Not just where but who
The number 40 is not merely significant in relation to the wilderness, but Luke’s readers will have connected this to the 40 days Moses fasted before the God (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9). Luke, like his fellow gospel writer Mattew, wants the reader to be aware that Jesus is the new Moses. Luke therefore does not merely paint a picture of Jesus overcoming temptation, but of Jesus leading us out of bondage to sin and temptation for freedom in God’s kingdom.
With this news that Jesus is our liberator who is even better than Moses, those who first heard Luke’s gospel of Jesus, and those who read it now today, can start to think of what this means for us.
But these three…
Famously, the devil tempted Jesus three times.
I think there is something helpful and powerful in reviving the medieval vocabulary for the temptations of: (1) gluttony, (2) vainglory, and (3) avarice for prominence and power.
Bread
We all need to eat, and personally I love nice bread. But the temptation for Jesus was not merely to eat, or perform a miracle, but to provide for himself in a way which was out of step with the work the Spirit and Father were doing in him. Jesus was still fasting and the food he needed was the sustenance of communing with God the Father.
It is easy to become impatient for God to fulfil his promises to us. The temptation is to take matters into our own hands, and this never ends well (think Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael – Genesis 16).
Vainglory
Vainglory is a rather old-fashioned word. It’s original 12th century usage meant, “worthless glory, meaningless honour”.
Jesus, secure in his identity as the Son of God, knew that any glory the devil could offer, or honour and authority he could bestow, was worthless and meaningless.
The devil’s offer of authority over and the glory of the kingdoms of this world was as scammers deal because it was linked to false worship; “if you worship me, I will give you this”.
Glory
Glory which is real and not worthless belongs to and comes from God alone and is inseparable from the love which flows from God. This is why the devil cannot offer true glory and why he could never be the subject of true worship, for in true worship love flows from the one worshiped as well as to the one worshiped.
The temptation of vainglory reminds us to check who and what we are worshiping, and if we are in danger of exchanging that which is beyond worth for that which is worthless (Matt 13:45; Phil. 3:7–11).
Avarice for Prominence and Power
Before Paul penned the famous words of Philippians 2:6 where he describes Jesus as not “grasping,” Luke reveals to us that Jesus is not greedy (avaricious) for power or control as the world conceives of it and offers it.
But the issue here is not just one of greed, but of timing.
Timing is a major theme of John’s gospel, which follows Jesus on the path from “my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4) to “the hour has come” (John 17:1). Jesus knows that all power and authority will be given to him (Matt. 28:18). Yet more than this, he knows that the power of the kingdom (which is to say the power God exercises in our world) is not the power of violence, or coercion, or subjugation, or dominance. Rather, God’s power is manifest through weakness, and service, and love.
The Three we Need
We may not be tempted by the devil in person as Jesus was but we regularly face the same three temptations. We find the triple antidote to these temptations in Paul’s great reflection on love in 1 Corinthians 13. He ends with these words; And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
When faced with the temptation to (metaphorically) turn stones into bread, we need faith in God’s promises and provision for us.
When faced with the temptation to grasp power and authority to make things happen and put the world to rights, we know that only God can do this in a way which is just and brings healing rather than new forms of tyranny. And so, we stand firm and operate from a place of hope that Christ will make all things new (Rev. 21:5).
When faced with the temptation of vainglory, we regain a proper perspective of who we are and who God is when we remember that he loves us unconditionally. To play on Irenaeus’s famous dictum, Gloria Dei vivens homo (The glory of God is man fully alive), we are fully alive when we know God’s love and respond by loving of God, self, and neighbour with all we are (Mark 12:30 – 31).
Grace and peace.
Brodie