Luke 4

CHAPTER 4THEME: The temptation of Jesus; Jesus returns to Galilee and Nazarethrejected by His hometown; Jesus moves His headquarters to Capernaum and continues His ministryJesus is tempted as a man by Satan. They were human temptations such as come to all of us. They cover the entire spectrum of human temptations and are threefold:

1. Satan asks Jesus to make stones into bread to satisfy needs of the body. There is nothing wrong with bread. Bread is the staff of life. The body has need of bread, and Jesus was starving. What is wrong? To use His great powers to minister to Himself would be selfish. He must demonstrate the truth of the great principle, “…Man shall not live by bread alone …” (Mat_4:4). This is contrary to the thinking of this crass materialistic age that lives only to satisfy the whims of the body. Modern man in our secular society says, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” And as far as man is concerned, that ends it all. Selfishness is the curse of a creedless, secular society. Our Lord, in meeting this temptation, refuted the popular philosophy of the world.
2. Satan offers Jesus the nations of the world. Nations derive their power through brute force and political intrigue. War is a way of life. Hate and fear are the whips to motivate the mob. This is satanic, and Satan offers the kingdoms of the world on these terms.

Men must be changed in order to enter God’s Kingdom: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Joh_3:3). The answer of Jesus has a note of finality, “…Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Mat_4:10). Then the apostle Paul tells us, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2Co_10:3-5]. 3. Satan tempts Jesus to cast Himself down from the temple. It would seem a logical procedure for Jesus to impress the crowd as to His person and mission. But Jesus will follow no easy way to the throne. He must wear the crown of thorns before He wears the crown of glory. Stifler states succinctly, “There are two ways of despising God, one is to ignore His power, the other is to presume upon it.” Both are sin. It is easy to do nothing and then mouth pious platitudes about God providing for the sparrows and that He will take care of us. But God says, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread …” (Gen_3:19). For example, the missionary to a foreign land will have to study to learn the language, and then God will help him. We are partners of God, not puppets. Dr. Edward Judson, after considering what his father, Adoniram Judson, suffered in Burma said, “If we succeed without suffering, it is because others have suffered before us. If we suffer without success, it is that others may succeed after us.” Jesus rejected a false and phony spiritual stance. His answer was devastating: “Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah” (Deu_6:16). Actually, Jesus began His public ministry in His hometown of Nazareth where He was rejected and ejected. It was in the synagogue where He announced the fulfillment of Isa_61:1-2 in a remarkable way.

Luke 4:1

THE TEMPTATION OF JESUSWe have before us the testing of the Lord Jesus Christ. The synoptic GospelsMatthew, Mark, and Lukeall record this testing. John does not record this incident because he is presenting the Lord Jesus as the Son of God with the emphasis upon His deity. The synoptic Gospels place the emphasis upon the humanity of the Lord Jesus. He was tempted as a man. In the Gospel of Luke He is presented as the Son of Man.

Luk_3:38 says, “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” This is the genealogy of Mary which traces the line of Christ back to Adam. Being a son of Adam takes Him right back to the beginning of the race of which we are members. It was as a human being that He was tempted in all points like we are; yet He was without sin. There is a frightful and fearful darkness about the temptation of our Lord that is an appalling enigma. I must confess that I cannot explain it, but I will take you to the very edge, and at the fringe I hope we can learn something. There were unseen and hidden forces of evil all about Him. He was surrounded by powers of darkness and destruction. He grappled with the basic problems of mankind, that which is earthy, and He won a victory for you and me. There are several preliminary considerations we need to have in mind as we look at the testing of our Lord. We are told that He was filled with the Holy Spirit. As man, the Son of God needed to be filled with the Spirit in order to meet the temptation. And, friend, I cannot face the temptations of this world in my own strength. In Rom_7:21 Paul tells us, “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.” Haven’t you found that to be true? In Rom_8:3-4 Paul continues, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” So in Gal_5:16 Paul concludes, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” We need the Holy Spirit. In Deu_8:2 God told the Israelites, “And thou shalt remember all the way which 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, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.” In other words, God was testing the Israelites. God never tests anyone with evil. We are told that before the Lord was tested, He was led (Mark says driven) by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. In other words, the Lord did not seek the temptation. Even at the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed, “Let this cup pass from me” (see Luk_22:24). The Lord’s temptation did not begin at the end of the forty days; rather, Luke is telling us that after the temptation He was hungry. He was tempted of the Devil all during those forty days. Satan did not stop tempting the Lord after the wilderness temptation either. At the Garden of Gethsemane was another onslaught of Satan. In verse Luk_4:13 of this chapter Luke tells us, “And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.” Something else we need to understand is that Satan is a person. I understand that from thirty percent to ninety percent of the ministers say that he is not a person. The Scripture, however, makes it quite clear that the Devil is a person. When he tempted the Lord Jesus, did he come in bodily form? Did he come as a spirit or did he come as an angel of light? The Bible tells us that the Lord met him face-to-face. We need to realize that Satan is subtleone time he is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, and the next time he is an angel of light deceiving even the elect if he could do so (see 1Pe_5:8; 2Co_11:14). What is the meaning of the Lord’s temptation? The word tempt has a twofold meaning. To tempt means “to incite and entice to evil,” and it means “to seduce.” If a person can be seduced to do evil, that means there is something in the individual that causes him to yield. It would not be a temptation unless something in a person could yield to it. However, this was not true of the Lord Jesus Christ. He could say, “Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (Joh_14:30). I do not know about you, friend, but every time Satan comes to me he always finds some place to take hold of. Our Lord was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners (see Heb_7:26). The temptation of Christ was not a temptation to do evil. Then the word tempt is used in another way. Gen_22:1 tells us that “…God did tempt Abraham …” in that God tested Abraham. Also He proved, or tested, Israel for forty years in the wilderness. This raises a question. Could the Lord Jesus Christ have fallen? No, Christ could not have fallen.

Then was it a legitimate temptation? It was a test. All new articles are tested. For example, tires and automobiles are tested. On television commercials the manufacturers show you the new model car and drive it through purgatory to show you the amount of punishment it can take. Everything is tested, and for anything to break down would be pretty embarrassing for the manufacturer.

The Lord Jesus Christ could not have fallen; so was this a legitimate test? It was, and let me illustrate this fact with a simple story. When I was a boy in west Texas, we lived on the west fork of the Brazos River. In the summertime there was not enough water in the stream to rust a shingle nail. It was dry. In the wintertime, however, you could have kept a battleship afloat in it. One year we had a flood, and it washed out a railroad bridge over the river. Santa Fe railroad workers came immediately to build a new bridge.

When the bridge was completed, they put two engines on the bridge and tied down the whistles. In our little town we had never heard two engine whistles blow at the same time; so everyone raced to the bridge, all twenty-seven of us. One brave fellow in the crowd asked, “What are you doing?” The engineer replied, “We are testing the bridge.” “Do you think it will break?” the young man queried. “Of course it won’t break,” the engineer said with almost a sneer. “If you know it won’t break, why are you putting the engines on the bridge?” the young man wondered. “Just to prove that it won’t break,” said the engineer. That is what the Lord’s temptation was. It showed us that we have a Savior who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through Him (see Heb_7:25-26). The Lord was tested in a way that we could never have been tested. When we are tested, there is always a breaking point. When we reach the breaking point, we break and then the pressure is removed. The pressure was never removed from our Lord. His was a threefold temptation: physical, psychological, and spiritual. The Lord was tested in the physical realm.

Luke 4:3

The devil did not ask the Lord to commit a crime. Bread is the staff of life and is a necessity. On one occasion the Lord fed a multitude of five thousand persons, and four thousand persons at another time. Eve looked at the tree in the midst of the Garden of Eden and saw that it was good for food and ate of it. John calls this test the lust or the desire of the flesh (see 1Jn_2:16). A man must live, you know, and in order to live he must eat.

That is the philosophy of most people today. The clamor of the crowd, the medley of the mob is, “What shall we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” That is just about all that life is for most people. Men will become dishonest, steal, gamble, sell liquor, and resort to almost anything to obtain something for their bodies. Women will sell their virtue for a mink coat or a diamond ring. Satan revealed his low estimate of mankind when he told the Lord, “…Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life” (Job_2:4). That is not true because Job did not yield.

And our Lord used the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, to defeat Satan.

Luke 4:4

Next Satan tested the Lord in the psychological realm.

Luke 4:5

This test had to do with what John calls the lust of the eyes. In the Garden of Eden, Eve looked at the fruit on the tree in the midst of the garden and saw that it was pleasant to the eyes. Satan took Christ high on a mountain and showed Him the kingdoms of the world and offered them to Him. The “kingdoms of the world” encompassed the great Roman Empire. But Christ was on His way to the throne by way of the cross. Satan was saying, “Let’s miss the cross.” Paul tells us, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness …” (1Co_1:18)how foolish to take that route of suffering when Satan offered an easy way to the throne!

Now let me say something that may shock you. It is satanic to try and build a kingdom here on earth without Jesus Christ! There are only two rulers: the Lord Jesus and Satan. If you are not taking the Lord into account, you must take the other. Paul said, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1Co_2:2). Finally the Lord was tested in the spiritual realm.

Luke 4:9

Eve desired the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden because it could make one wise. John calls this testing “…the pride of life …” (1Jn_2:16). This deals with the realm of the spirit and faith. Satan wanted the Lord to demonstrate that He was the Son of God"Show them, prove it, then they will accept you." It was not faith; it was presumption. It was daring God. Faith is quietly waiting upon God, doing His will. It is interesting to note that when Satan quoted from Psa_91:11-12, he misquoted Scripture, just as he misquoted God’s word in the garden to Eve. Why was Jesus Christ tempted? To demonstrate that you and I have a sinless Savior. He is sinless, impeccable, and able to save. He proved that all power had been given to Him. There is a Man in glory today, friend, who understands us and is able to sympathize with us. It is wonderful to have a Savior like that! John writes, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1Jn_2:1-2). The Lord Jesus can be depended upon in every circumstance of life.

Luke 4:14

JESUS RETURNS TO GALILEE AND NAZARETHREJECTED BY HIS HOMETOWNAfter Satan tested the Lord Jesus Christ, He was strengthened. After the temptation the Lord comes forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. Temptation will do one of two things for an individual; it will either strengthen or weaken him. It is like the army, which will make you or break you. Whether this is actually true of the army, I do not know. This I do know, however, that suffering and testing will either sweeten or sour you, soften or harden you. There is an old familiar illustration which says that the same sun will melt the wax but harden the clay.

It is the character of, or the condition of, the element and not the sun that melts the wax and hardens the clay. God is not going to harden you. He did not harden Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh already possessed a hard heart, and God only brought that fact out into the open. Our Lord identified Himself with mankind. Scripture confirms this fact: “Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his breathren, that he might be a merciful and faithful priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Heb_2:17).

The Lord Jesus Christ became a man and so after His ordeal He needed the strengthening of the Holy Spirit. And if our Lord needed the strengthening of the Holy Spirit after His testing, how much more do we need Him!

Luke 4:15

After the temptation the Lord returned to Galilee and taught in the synagogues. He was glorified by the people; He was praised and complimented. This verse sounds like a doxology. You know, it is possible to praise Him and still reject Him. It is possible to sing the doxology and turn down His claims. The same crowd that sang “Hosanna” and wanted to crown Him, the next day joined the mob to crucify Him. I think of a picture of the Crucifixion with the empty cross in the foreground and in the background is the donkey feeding on withered palm branches. That is the way it was. One day the Lord was praised, and the next day He was crucified. Now we come to one of the most beautiful incidents recorded in God’s Word. It is a scintillating story that flashes with light. It is fragrant with meaning. It is lovely to look at, and this is the way Dr. Luke tells it:

Luke 4:16

This incident is recorded only by Dr. Luke and is so remarkable that we cannot pass it by. We are told that after the temptation, the Lord returned to His hometown. Generally the hometown is proud of the local boy who has become famous. As was His custom on the Sabbath, He went to the synagogue in Nazareth. Notice that He never entertained the false notion that you can worship God in nature as well as in the appointed place. Although I enjoy playing golf, I get a little weary of hearing some men say very piously that they can worship God just as easily on the golf course on Sunday as they can in church. What they say is true, but the question I always ask them is, “When you take your golf bag out on the course on Sunday morning, do you go out to worship God or to play golf?” The fact of the matter is, they have no intention of worshiping God on the golf course. You go to church on Sunday morning to worship God, and you go out on the golf course to play golf. It was the custom of our Lord to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. The synagogue was one of the most important religious institutions of the Jews in the time of our Lord. It must have come into existence during the time of the Babylonian captivity. The Jews were far from their native land, from the temple and the altar. They no doubt felt drawn to gather round those who were especially pious and God-fearing in order to listen to the Word of God and engage in some kind of worship. In Eze_14:1; Eze_20:1 it is mentioned that the elders gathered around Ezekiel, and it may have been in such a setting as the synagogue. After the exile, the synagogue remained. At first it was meant only for the exposition of the Mosaic Law. Later, a time of prayer and preaching was added. However, primarily, the synagogue was for instruction in the Law for all classes of people. At the time of our Lord there were synagogues in all the larger towns. I can now fill in one day of the silent years of Christ’s earthly life. I do not know much about the other six days of each week, other than He was a carpenter and worked on those days. But I know that every seventh day He went to the synagogue. He went to the appointed place to worship because He could witness there. Now He has come home for awhile and is in the synagogue. He is handed the Book, and He begins to read it. He reads from Isaiah. In those days the Bible was not divided into chapters and verses, but had it been, He would have read Isa_61:1-2. The important thing to notice is where He broke off reading. He did not read, “…and the day of vengeance of our God….” He closed the Book and gave it back to the minister.

The amazing thing is that He did not stop reading at the end of a sentence but stopped before finishing it. In our translation, He stopped reading at the comma, but there was no comma in the text He was reading. He made absolutely no mention of the phrase, “the day of vengeance of our God.” He made no mention of any of the text that followed this phrase. Do you know why? He looked at that crowd and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Here is a passage of Scripture that was going to be fulfilled down to a comma, and the rest of the passage would not be fulfilled until He came back the second time. The day of vengeance had not yet come. What is the day of vengeance? It is that time of which God said, “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Psa_2:8). How is the Lord going to get the heathen for His inheritance? “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Psa_2:9). That is the way the Lord will come to power.

That will be the day of vengeance. That is the great Day of the Lord, and it will take place when Christ comes the second time. He came the first time to preach the gospel to the poor that they might be saved. He came anointed by the Holy Spirit to bring the glorious message of salvation. We are still living in that wonderful day, the day of the gospel. When He comes the second time, it will be the day of vengeance.

Luke 4:22

The people looked at Him and remembered Him as Joseph’s son, a carpenter. That seemed to spoil it all. How could He be the Messiah? Luke is making it very clear that He took upon Himself our frail humanity.

Luke 4:23

The Lord is illustrating this in a marvelous way. He cited two Gentiles who lived outside of the land of Israelthe widow of Sarepta and Naaman of Syriain whose lives God worked miraculously. He is trying to show them that they, His own people, were apt to miss a great blessing because they would not accept who He was. They would be like the many widows and the many lepers of Israel who were not healed during the time of Elijah.

Luke 4:28

The people of Jesus’ hometown rejected Him. The country around Nazareth is rough country, and they led Him to the brow of a hill, intending to push Him off to His death. His escape from this mob was a miracle.

Luke 4:31

JESUS MOVES HIS HEADQUARTERS TO CAPERNAUM AND CONTINUES HIS MINISTRYFrom this verse through the rest of the chapter we have one day with the Lord Jesus. Many of us would have loved to have spent a day with Him when He was on earth. Luke makes this possible for us. Both Matthew and Mark record the fact that the Lord Jesus moved His headquarters from His hometown of Nazareth to Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. He did this because the people from His own town would not receive Him. There came a day when He told the people of Capernaum, “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell” (Luk_10:15). Because His headquarters were there, what an opportunity they had. Light creates responsibility.

Luke 4:32

As the Lord taught in the synagogue on the Sabbath, He did not speak as a scribe or a Pharisee but as one who had authority.

Luke 4:33

We are living in a day when demonism has lifted its ugly head again, and Satan worship is a reality. Demons were working in the days of our Lord, and they are working now. Our Lord cast a demon out of an individual. Even considering the use of drugs, it is difficult to explain some of the actions and awful crimes being committed unless the perpetrator is under the power and control of Satan.

Luke 4:38

After leaving the synagogue, it seems that the Lord went to Simon Peter’s house, probably for the noonday meal. While He was in Peter’s house, He healed “Simon’s wife’s mother,” Peter’s mother-in-law, who had a great fever. The severity of diseases was indicated by saying one had a small or a great fever. This evidently was a serious illness. Our Lord rebuked the fever, using Luke’s medical terminology, “be muzzled.” The fever was like a wild dog that had broken the leash. Our Lord also dealt with sin like that. Immediately she arose and ministered unto them. When the Lord Jesus Christ healed someone, healing did not come gradually but took place immediately. It was an amazing thing. I have heard about a meeting conducted by a “faith healer” not long ago. It was reported that a cripple was led up to the platform where he was declared healed then led away, still limping. Then someone came to the platform who said he had internal cancer, and the faith healer declared that he was immediately healed of cancer. It is amazing how people will accept that type of testimony. Why wasn’t the crippled man healed immediately? If our Lord had done it, the cure would have been immediate. I can hear someone asking, “Don’t you believe in divine healing?” My answer is, “What other kind of healing is there?” All healing is divine. This is what Dr. Luke is telling us. Doctors do not always recognize this fact. A wonderful doctor who was a member of my church in Texas once said to me, “I send the bill, but God does the healing. I take out that part that is offending the body, but God will have to be the Healer.” What a great testimony. God, and not an individual, does the healing.

Luke 4:40

His day had started in the morning, teaching in the synagogue. Now it is late in the evening. The Lord goes outside to the multitude that had gathered, and He moves from one to another, touching and healing them. Matthew in recording this incident quotes from the prophet Isaiah: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Mat_8:17). The Lord healed in a wonderful way. “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isa_53:4). The Lord bore the sicknesses and diseases of the people sympathetically, in spite of the fact that the nation Israel in that day esteemed Him stricken.

That is the way we also esteem Him. You see, He did not heal these people on the basis of their faith as far as we know, but His great heart of sympathy caused Him to move in their behalf. We are told to have such a heart of sympathy today. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal_6:2).