The Temptations Movie Part 2
Gisberto Letter
We return at this time to our study of the gospel of Luke and chapter 4, the first 13 verses together. As I progressed through the study of the gospel of Luke, having in the past years spent many, many, many weeks going through the gospel of Matthew... In fact it took us about eight and a half years to get through Matthew, it took us about three years to get through the gospel of John. I suppose if we added all the years together, including the writing of the commentaries, probably twenty years of my life I have spent studying the gospels. And I've come to a conclusion that the person of Jesus Christ is probably the single greatest evidence of the inspiration of Scripture.
When people talk about, how do we know the Bible is true? They might say, fulfilled prophecy, where there are things predicted in the Bible that did come to pass exactly was they were predicted. Somebody else might say, because of its historical accuracy. That is the Bible says certain things happened, and we find from archeological discovery that they happened exactly as the Bible records them. Others might say its scientific accuracy in a non-scientific world. For example, the oldest book in the Bible, Job, written in the patriarchal period says, "He hangs the world on nothing." And so some would say the great evidence of the veracity of Scripture is its scientific accuracy in a non-scientific age. And there might be some other suggestions as well, its miraculous element, etc.
But I think the most compelling thing about Scripture is the person of Jesus Christ. Every character devised by the human mind is somehow flawed. Somehow everything that we touch comes out like us to one degree or another. It is beyond possibility that mankind could invent a person like Jesus Christ as He is portrayed on the pages of Scripture.
His person is so perfect; His wisdom is so profound; His response to every single event so perfectly consistent with divine nature that it is inconceivable that a man or men could invent Jesus Christ. Far less possible that demons should invent Him and pull some monumental deception on the human race in the form of Scripture. Jesus Christ as a person is so compelling, so profound, so perfect as to be beyond the possibility of human invention.
Now in John Milton's famous Paradise Regained, the author expresses the purpose of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and he does so in the following words, as though spoken by God, His Father. Milton writes as if God is speaking, "But first I mean to exercise Him in the wilderness. There He shall first lay down the rudiments of His great warfare, ere I send Him forth to conquer sin and death, the two grand foes, by humiliation and strong suffering," end quote.
Well, the...the wisdom of John Milton is obviously legendary and Milton had it right. When he penned those words it was God sending forth His Son for His exercise in the wilderness in which He would defeat the devil and then demonstrate there the power for the great warfare in which He would on the cross conquer sin and at the grave conquer death. If Jesus would triumph in the wilderness, then He would triumph at Calvary and He would triumph in the garden. He would triumph at the cross and triumph at the tomb. And if Jesus could conquer Satan, then we can be assured of that triumph and that there will be paradise regained. And as we are learning from Luke chapter 4, He did triumph in the wilderness and later He triumphed at the cross, where He bruised Satan's head with a fatal wound, where He destroyed sin, where He provided escape from hell for all who believe. And then we know He conquered death. Rising the third day, now ascended to heaven He continues to conquer all sin and all accusation laid against His people because He ever lives to make intercession for us; so that in His securing love, in His conquering grace we are more than conquerors for whom nothing can ever separate us from His eternal love.
Now His ability to conquer is first demonstrated right here. Oh we understand that for thirty years He was tempted in all points like as we are, but we never had an insight into any of those experiences. Now for the first time we see His conquering power in a most formidable conflict with the enemy and it sets in motion all the rest of His conquerings; at the cross, at the tomb, and now in heaven where He conquers by grace and mercy extended toward His own, all sin and all accusations so that we are more than conquerors in His eternal love.
That's not all. In the future He will come as King of kings and Lord of lords, returning to earth, at which point He will conquer all ungodliness. He will conquer all the ungodly. He will destroy all unredeemed sinners. He will send them to the Lake of Fire. He will send all demons to the Lake of Fire. He will send the beast and the false prophet, the Antichrist and his henchmen to the Lake of Fire. He will send the devil himself to the Lake of Fire. He will then destroy the sin-stained universe. It will... It will literally go up in an atomic holocaust. The elements will melt with fervent heat and in its place He will recreate a new heaven and a new earth of holiness and righteousness alone, which will last forever. That will be His final great conquering of evil.
So you see, what happens here in the temptation is a foretaste of what is to come through all of the great events of the life and ministry of the King, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. We believe that He will conquer in the future because He conquered in the past, and this is where it all began. It's as if the...the guarantee of His future conquerings was established in the event of His temptation in the wilderness when Satan came and hit him with the full fury of his best assaults. And Jesus withstood them all triumphantly.
So already we know that this is the Son of God. Now maybe just a little bit of background. Jesus is called the Son of God about eighty times in the New Testament. It is a very common title for Jesus, about eighty times. Fifty-one times in the first three gospels; and over 100 times, a total of 151 times, in the four gospels, Jesus speaks of God as His Father. So this is a...this is a very, very common expression, Son of God, and Jesus referring to God as His Father.
Now let me just tell you. This is a very remarkable thing. For Jesus to claim to be the Son of God was very remarkable. For Him to call God "My Father" was remarkable. It expresses eternal deity. It expresses sameness of nature as we have told you in the past.
Let me just kind of put it in perspective for you. Two times in the Old Testament, two times in the thirty-nine books of the entire Old Testament, God is directly addressed as Father. That's all, only two times. Fifteen times the term "Father" is used to describe God indirectly. But never is any of those expressions of God as Father made by an individual. Whenever God is referred to as Father, it is as the Father of the nation Israel, never as the Father of an individual. There is no example in existence in Jewish history of anyone addressing God as "My Father" in a personal way. Jesus did it all the time. Jesus had a relationship to God that no one had ever had.
To the Jews, to say "God is my Father," would be to say that I have the same nature as God, I share the same essence as God, just as in the human realm a son shares his father's nature genetically. But constantly did Jesus call God His Father; 151 times such relationship is indicated in the gospels.
And furthermore, Jesus not only called God His Father, but He used the term "Abba," which means papa, or daddy, which is a more intimate, endearing title that...that has less austerity to it, maybe features rather than respect and honor the intimacy of that relationship. And to the Jews, for anybody to say God was his Father was blasphemy and they accused Jesus of being a blasphemer because when He called God His Father He was making Himself equal with God. That's exactly what He was doing. And for Him to speak to God as Abba was beyond tolerance. To the Jew, you remember now, the most formidable doctrine in Judaism is the Shema. The most formidable doctrine in Judaism is the Deuteronomy 6, "The Lord our God is one." This is what sets Judaism apart from the polytheism of the world. It is theistic, it is monotheistic and that is what the Jews have always celebrated, that the Lord God is one. And for someone to come along and say, "I am Son of God," would be to the Jew the idea that God was more than one. Unthinkable and blasphemous and yet in John's gospel we read this in the very first verse, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God," speaking of Christ. In the 5th chapter of John in verse 23, it says, "In order that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father."
Now this is just beyond imagination. To honor the Son as you honor the Father is to say the Son is equal to the Father, is to say Jesus is equal to the one true living God of Israel, and that is outside their understanding of monotheistic theology. And so it is what set their teeth on edge against Jesus. They could not accept that. And yet Jesus continued to say it over and over. Chapter 10 of the gospel of John, verse 30, listen to this, "I and the Father are one." The next statement, "The Jews took up stones again to stone Him."
Why? Because they perceived that as blasphemy. In John 14 Jesus says, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," another of the same kinds of statements. In John chapter 15 verse 22, "If I had not come and spoken to you, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me, hates My Father also." And so it goes. John 17, He says, "Restore Me to the glory I had with You before the world began." And the way the gospel of John comes to its culmination in the 20th chapter and verse 28 is just as clear as it can be. John 20:28, Thomas said unto Him, to Jesus, "My Lord and my God." And verse 31, "These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name."
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