TL;DR:
Satan, who had successfully tempted and broken many in Old Testament times, failed to break Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus resisted each attack—whether appealing to physical needs, pride, or shortcuts—by quoting Scripture. This shows us how God's Word can be a powerful defense against evil.
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me."
13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him [Jesus] until an opportune time.
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.
Satan had temporarily reached the bottom of his bag of tricks. Every avenue of attack he'd tried on Jesus had been thwarted. His demonic attempts to foil divine plans had been frustrated.
Jesus had turned aside every temptation. The lure to satisfy natural bodily desires by wrong means? Resisted.
The appeal of doing the dramatic even though that meant altering the divine plan? Rejected.
The temptation to take the shortcut, to manipulate the divine will? Cold-shouldered.
Powerful temptations flooded in one after another.
Of course, Satan had had lots of practice. The Old Testament records the failures of Adam and Eve in Eden, Moses at Horeb, David on his rooftop terrace, and Saul after the battle with the Amalekites. These accounts show how even God's people can give in to temptation.
Now he brought all of that cunning and experience to bear on Jesus. But Jesus stood his ground.
And suddenly, Satan was out of ideas. There was nothing else he could think of to do with this 30-year-old carpenter from Nazareth. In the scorching dryness of the wilderness, Hell had exhausted itself.
So Satan left. Temporarily, to be sure, but he was gone. The Gospels describe further testing, yet Jesus remained faithful.
The writer of Hebrews sums up what this can mean for us: Our high priest was tempted as we are, yet without sin, and can identify with every one of us (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus can identify with me, the PK (preacher's kid), and He can identify with my friend Ron Williams, who came to Christ from a "pagan" environment.
Roman Catholics often pray to deceased persons. Many of them believe that these "saints" have special access to God. The idea is that these "saints" were super holy during their lifetime; they can form a kind of bridge between God and humanity. Those deceased people are "in" with God and, of course, since they are in Heaven, they are in close proximity to God. Thus, they can be effective intercessors for people still alive on earth.
That idea does not square with Luke's powerful account of Christ in the wilderness! This one mediator between God and human beings fully experienced temptation.1 Therefore, I don't need to go through a deceased fellow human being to approach God. Christ, the God-man, can identify with me, and I with Him.
Sometimes, we say of each other, "Well, you don't understand. You've never gone through anything like this." With Jesus, there need be no fear of misunderstanding.
And in the face of temptation, I can't really improve on the defense Jesus used in the wilderness. To achieve victory over Satan, Jesus quoted Scripture. And what power the Word of God demonstrated!
According to an account from Florence, Italy, during a period of religious intolerance some time ago, authorities confiscated some Bibles. To keep these Bibles from trickling out into circulation before being destroyed, they were locked in an empty prison cell to await a bonfire.
What a graphic testimony of that Book's power! The authorities were so fearful of its influence that they locked it up in jail!
This same power is available to us. And Christ stands ready to give us through His Holy Spirit all the aid necessary so that Satan will arrive at the bottom of his bag of tricks and come up empty-handed against us—and we'll still be there standing erect, bloodied from the battle, perhaps, but unbowed.
1 1 Timothy 2:5, New International Reader's Version
I wrote this meditation while Barbara and I were serving as missionaries in Italy. It is one of a series of 52 brief devotionals written for The Standard, a weekly take-home curriculum piece for the Faith Connections adult Sunday school curriculum published by The Foundry.
-- Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
Jesus met temptation with Scripture. His example calls us to know God's Word and turn to it when we face temptation and deceit.
In Nazareth, Jesus announced His Spirit-empowered mission to bring good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, and release to the oppressed. His words invite us to trust His mission and follow Him faithfully.
Memorable Quotes About Other Bible Verses
