Word of Salvation – Vol. 21 No. 21 – March 1975

 

Satan’s Offer Of Peace To The Saviour

 

Sermon by Rev. Fred Vanderbom, B.A. Th. Grad on Luke 4:5-8

Scripture readings: Daniel 6; Luke 4:1-13

Psalter Hymnal: 303:1,2,6; 240:1,2 (with Law); 124:5,6; 408; 467:1,4

 

Congregation!

How many of us realise that in this world there are really only two nations?  The one nation consists of all those people who are ruled by the Lord Jesus, people who want to recognise and honour God in their daily life.

The other half of the human race, whether people realise it or not, is ruled over by King Satan.

Here in our text for today we meet the leaders of these two nations.  We see the Lord Jesus and King Satan together.

Most of us, even the boys and girls, would know that Jesus came into our world to destroy King Satan, and to break the power which he has over the human race.  And that, of course, meant that Jesus’ life on earth was not going to be easy or peaceful.  There was going to be a struggle, a fight to the finish.  But this was exactly why Jesus came to break Satan’s hold, to free people from Satan’s rule, and so to build up a new nation – a nation of men and women, boys and girls, who love God and want to follow Him.

The text tells us about something that happened at the time when Jesus was going to start His fight with Satan.

Before you start to fight for something, you need to be clear on several things.
            – what are you really FIGHTING FOR… what is YOUR AIM in fighting?
            – is your AIM WORTH fighting for? – even if it costs you your life?
            – do you really HAVE to fight,
                        or are there other ways of getting what you want?

We see in our text that the Lord Jesus had the aim of his life very clearly in his mind when he met with Satan.

He is quite ready to do battle with Satan.

It is quite clear that he has decided that there is only one way to do what he came to do.

Now there may be some of us here who will say, “Big deal!  This is hardly an exciting story.  We know right from the start what is going to happen.  Poor old Satan never had a chance, really, did he?  Jesus would have done the right thing, no matter what.  There’s just nothing to these Bible stories about Jesus fighting Satan.”

Congregation, if there are any of us who feel a bit this way about the story of the text, then it does show at least one good thing.

It shows, doesn’t it, that over the years we have come to “know” the Lord Jesus quite well.  We have come to know what the life and work of Jesus were all about.  It shows we have seen something of his great loyalty to God His Father, and the great power with which He stood up to the work of Satan in the world.

And if we sometimes feel that the struggle between Jesus and Satan seemed a bit phony, a bit unreal, then also, please don’t forget something else.  And that is this: that the SAME BATTLE is going on in our OWN life.

No matter how unreal the conflict between Jesus and Satan may at times seem to us, the same conflict is there in the life of each one of us.  Every day of our life, Satan is offering us POWER, just like he offered Jesus power.  Of course, Satan would not be so silly as to offer US power over the whole world!  As we shall see soon, that WAS a real temptation for the Lord, but it wouldn’t really appeal to many of us, would it!  No, we would be quite happy with just a little power.

“Just leave me free to talk about other people’s affairs, Of course, that’s not gossip.  I’m really only trying to show interest.”

The power to meddle and annoy our brothers and sisters is one Satan loves giving us.  And the power to ‘tell the truth’, of course.  “I really told him the truth!  He just doesn’t want to face the facts!  Of course I was only trying to help him – just told him straight.’

The fact that “telling someone the truth” so often gives us a good feeling, and that it so seldom seems to help the other person much, we forget about all that!

Satan is offering us power all the time!  The right to meddle.  The right to speak the truth.

And what does Satan really ask us in return?  Very little, it seems.  Congregation, we need to be so careful!  Satan can come to us in ways we don’t really recognise.  So often we don’t even recognise how clever and real his offers are.

And that was how Satan approached the Lord Jesus in our text.

The temptation here is so clever and so subtle that we are inclined to brush the whole thing off as phony and unreal.  Let us look at it a bit more closely.

Luke tells us in verses 5 and 6,

And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory…..!”

Whatever WE may think of this offer (and most of us would hardly be interested in ruling the world), it was really the perfect thing to offer to Jesus, the Saviour.  Of all the temptations Satan tried on Jesus, this must have been the most attractive one, and the hardest to resist.

This may be why Matthew (in chapter 4) puts it last of the three, whereas Luke has it in the middle.  The order doesn’t really matter; just think of what it meant.

Think of what the Jews expected the Messiah to do in his life.  Every Jew in those days was looking forward to the day when God’s long-promised Anointed One would stand up from amongst the nation, and start to do his work.  Jesus grew up during the time when the Romans were in control of Palestine.  If you want some idea of how the Lord Jesus must have felt about this situation, think of the feelings of the Dutch and other Europeans during the last war, when the Germans were in control everywhere.

Or you may have noticed what happened when the Australian government recognised last year that Russia was the actual government today of the so-caller Baltic states.  We have seen on TV and in the papers how the Latvians, Estonian and Lithuanians felt about that, and we can understand their feelings, some of us very well.

The Lord Jesus was a Jew, but when he worked in the carpenter’s workshop, his taxes went to that fat and arrogant government in Rome.  Jesus would have heard about the bad decisions of the Roman governor in Jerusalem; he would have known girls to be molested by the Roman soldiers; he would have seen the effects of Roman occupation on the Jewish countryside and nation.

And Jesus loved His people, the people who had been for so long God’s special nation.  He too would have longed for the day when the Jewish nation might be free again.

It was this that made Satan’s offer of world power so terribly attractive to our Lord.  This was a very REAL temptation – especially for Jesus!  He knew that he WAS the long-promised Messiah.  He WAS the Saviour the Jews were waiting and longing for, and very soon people would start to recognise Him.

There was a prayer which Jews used to pray in those days, and Jesus would have joined in this prayer too.

Jews prayed that “…God would send the promised King, the Son of David, clothed with power, to annihilate the godless rulers, and to cleanse Jerusalem from the heathen by breaking them in pieces with rods of iron..!” (Notice the quotation from Psalm 2, a psalm about the Messiah!)  Then (the prayer continues), “…..the heathen will be put under Messiah’s yoke, and foreigners will have no right to dwell among the people of God.”

In Jesus’ days, there were even Jewish guerrilla and underground fighters against the Roman government, just to help the Lord God along a bit, to answer their prayer.  Some of these guerrillas would murder Jews who worked for the Roman occupation government.

Congregation, this was the kind of Saviour-Messiah most Jews wanted and were waiting for.

In Luke 1 and 2, we read that there were a few exceptions.  God-fearing people like Simeon and Anna, and no doubt there were a few others too, who “were looking for the consolation of Israel” and for “the redemption of Jerusalem.”  In other words, their dreams were not quite along the lines of a military Messiah.

But the great majority of Jews wanted

             – not a suffering Saviour, a man of sorrows, one who would bring redemption and consolation to God’s people, one to win people’s hearts for the Lord and his ways;

            – but most wanted a “MAN”: someone to rule, to lay down the law, to tell people what was wanted and to demand it with a fist and a shout; someone to pick up those nasty Romans and put them out at the end of a Jewish boot.

SATAN knew what the Jews wanted!  And so did JESUS by now; he was a grown man who understood his countrymen.  This is what makes this temptation not quite as simple as we might sometimes think.

Satan is really very clever.

“Look Jesus, there you have all the nations of the world.  Just look at them; think of the power there; the greatness you would have, ruling over them; no more rebellion, no more revolts!

You would be undisputed ruler – for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.”

Think of the beauty and wealth that will come to the Jews. 

Think of the brains that will come to Jerusalem to study.  Just imagine God’s own people ruling the world, the Jews in control, no more conflicts.”

 We can imagine Satan going on.

“Jesus, You don’t want to fight yourself to death any more than I do.  If we continue to behave like this, trying to defeat each other, it’s going to mean– the finish of one of us, sooner or later. And think of how unpopular you will be with your own people, Jesus.  If you go on like this, you are going to make a lot of enemies.  You know they are expecting a different kind of Messiah, not a lonely man dying on a cross.

“Let’s see if we can work out a deal.  I’ll be quite honest with you.  No hidden strings.

            First – you agree that I’m Number One; you worship me.
                        Let’s leave God out of this.

            Second – I’ll make you the sort of Messiah that people will really like.
                        A man with lots of power; lord of the world.
                        Someone who can tell everyone what to do. A good strong ruler.

            Third – I won’t expect much in return.
                        I’m happy to be just “Lord of the universe” – in the background mostly,
                        After all, who cares about who rules over the stars and planets?”

Satan knows why the Son of God has come into the world.  He knows that it is to break the back of Satan’s hold on sinful man.  Jesus has come to pay for man’s sin, so that Satan can no longer claim people as belonging to his side of the fence.

And Satan knows that if Jesus succeeds in going this far, the day will also come when Jesus will destroy his influence completely.  The kingdom of darkness will one day be put away by King Jesus!

It is Satan’s fear of Jesus that makes him offer this compromise.  “This for Jesus, and Satan will hold onto the rest; and let’s leave God out of it.  That was in many ways a very attractive offer.  The Lord Jesus would still be recognised as lord and master by the whole world.  It would give the Jews the sort of leader and saviour which most of them wanted.  Life for Jesus would be the straight-forward and satisfying life of a hero, with everyone at his beck and call, only too happy to help him make the Jewish nation supreme.

Congregation, it is completely and utterly impossible for us to imagine what would have happened, if our Lord had given in to Satan’s offer.

The history of this world would have been different in a way we just can’t take in.  Just think for a moment!

We would be living without the cross and what happened there; there would be no Easter, no comfort at the grave for us.

There would be no Church, no missionary work; no Christian voice in our national life; no Christian salt in our civilisation and world-history.

Satan promised Jesus “power, authority, glory.”  We can TRY to imagine what that might have meant, but only try!  There would perhaps be something like a world empire, ruled from Jerusalem, with people like today’s Israelis checking on our Australian affairs.  And a legalistic religion perhaps, lots of rules and regulations, but none of the new wine of faith and joy in the Lord.  It is all too much to think about.  Quite impossible, really.  And just as well, too.  What a world!

The beautiful message of our text is that Jesus’ thoughts were higher than Satan’s thoughts.  Satan was trying to impress the Saviour with authority and glory.  Power over people and nations, control over the world’s wealth and resources and brains.  That all sounds beautiful and impressive!  Great!

But get a bit closer to the people you want to control.  Take a good look at the nations with their money and their talents.  What do you see?  Jesus saw people struggling with their weaknesses, feeling guilty about their sins and mistakes.  He saw people who found it impossible to find comfort, because they had so many doubts about God.  He could see men and women who are slaves of their own evil hearts, living far from God, with no real way of going to Him.

In this world he could see people cut off from each other by their own hatred and bitter memories, which they just could not and would not forget.

Fathers and mothers who are scared of their children, and of the day when they will be old and lonely and dumped by the next generation.  Boys and girls who have nobody to show them love; frightened of their parents.  People who are scared of the future, scared of the government, worried about everything.

This is what Jesus can see as he thinks of this world over which Satan says he can have authority.

Satan says, “Jesus, I promise you power over all this, authority, glory, success, just what all those people want – a real hero!”

But Jesus is not blind to the real facts about this world and about us.  He knows why the Father has sent him.  There is only one way to bring back a sinful person to God.  And that way is not through political power, and being able to lay down the rule, and making some new laws, and fitting in with the nation’s dreams.

Jesus knows that his power and his authority will have to be different.  “My kingdom is not of this world” he said later on.  Jesus knows that the power of the muscle won’t solve the basic problem of man.  Only the power of the Holy Spirit will do that: the power of the tremendous love and patience of God opening people’s eyes, giving them forgiveness, moving into their lives and homes, and so out.  Jesus knows that he will have to speak to the HEART of man, not just to his national feelings.  And that was why Jesus came: to be the kind of Saviour we REALLY need!

Congregation, it isn’t hard for US to sell ourselves to Satan.  In a way, it is true what Satan says in verse 6 of our text.  Satan says he can give the Lord Jesus all this authority and glory, because it has been given to him, and he can give it to whomever he likes.

Jesus said much the same thing about Satan, when he called him the “ruler of this world” Paul said he is the “prince of the power of the air”, and the apostle John wrote that “this whole world is in the power of the evil one.” So Satan is hardly telling lies when he says that he has a lot of influence.

Some of us may be a bit doubtful about Satan, and perhaps even tend to laugh at people who talk about the Devil.  The trouble is that so often we think of Satan as that horrible red dragon with horns and slit eyes and a pointed tail.  Or we think of Satan as we have him in the film ‘The Exorcist’: possessing young girls, making terrible noises, and lifting up the furniture.  Satan is very much alive today, and even in ‘The Exorcist’, but not in the way the film makes out.  When people are told that the DEVIL is responsible for things that happen, and NOT WE – that is the work of Satan.  When we let God down, or leave him out of something – that is Satan.  When people are willing to do a shady deal, or do the wrong thing to get what they want – we have Satan’s offer accepted there.  If we find we are happy to be half-hearted in our obedience to the Lord Jesus; if we insist on our own freedoms when it comes to the worship and service of God – then we are selling ourselves to Satan.  We are probably helping Satan to fight against Jesus, and so digging our own grave.

It seems so easy to do a deal with Satan.  He doesn’t get dressed up with horns and tail, he doesn’t ask us to sign, he seems to ask so little in return.  But the cost is terrible – so many have grown completely away from God.  They have tried to win in their life, but in fact they have lost their life.

The Lord Jesus was very quick and clear in turning down Satan’s offer.  He was utterly faithful to His Father, the Lord God, who loved Him and helped Him.  For Jesus, when it came to deciding for or against the work of God, and loving the Father, there was no question of compromise.  Jesus is not for sale,

Notice how when he was tempted, God’s written word was His guide.  “Jesus answered Satan, ‘It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”

This is also the way WE can go: the way of love for God, with the Bible as our guide.  “Worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve.  Because Jesus chose to do that, it makes it easier for US to do the same!  The Holy Spirit, who stood by Jesus, has because of the cross also been given to us who love Him and want to follow Him.

God will help us ― we can be sure of that!

Because Jesus was not only utterly faithful to God!  He is just as faithful to us – and He has given us His Holy Spirit to guide us into all the truth.

Amen!