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The Devil Led Him to Jerusalem

LUKE 4:1–9

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here.”

CONSIDER THIS

We now enter the third test, the third temptation, of Jesus in the wild. His vocation is at stake. He has been named and called by the Father, and the enemy is doing his primary destructive work, knowing all this is at stake. He is seeking to un-name Jesus—to cut off his personhood before the Creator and his ministry of bringing dead things to life before it even begins.

In the Madeleine L’Engle science fiction classic, A Wind in the Door, she speaks of people who love as “Namers,” and the demonic creatures that destroy as un-namers. The Father names us, and our name carries our calling, our purpose, our order in a chaotic world. The adversary un-names us, distorts our identity, and seeks to rip it from us as early as possible in life. That is why it is important to walk with the Lord in our younger years with mature guidance and Christ-oriented support; it is in the early years the enemy sought to strip from us our personhood before God. The Father wants to minister to those places of brokenness; our work is to not sweep them under the rug and hope we somehow outgrew lies we believed early on.

The satan, the accuser, has one shot left. In the first test, he aims at Jesus’s use of power, pressing him to use it on himself (the bread). In the second test, he aims at Jesus’s use of privilege, seeking to convince him he can have everything he ever desired without pain or suffering. In this third test, the evil one aims at Jesus’s use of persuasion—tempting him to perform a miracle that will convince all of his message and enable him to skip the unbelief that will inevitably lead him to a cross.

The devil wants Jesus to put the Lord his God to the test, but the nature of that press is toward a noble end—that all would see his deity.

Why is this such a subtle, important, final play of the enemy? I believe the answer lies in Israel’s primary stumbling in their forty years of wilderness wanderings—they asked for things that didn’t derive from the Father’s will, but rather from their own.

It is willfulness, our own will, that Jesus is being challenged to exert. Jesus will use the gift of his volition to heal the sick, raise the dead, and bring the message of life to millennia of souls like you and me. Could the satan get him to exert his own will to get the Father to do his—rather than the other way around?

A friend and fellow leader once suggested that the difference between prayer and magic is determined by knowing whose will is being done. In prayer, true conversation and communion with God, we are interested in seeing the Father’s will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9–13). In magic, which prayer can easily and subtly turn into, we use our will and prayer to get God to do our will. Whether our will being done is expressed in a chain letter full of “just pass this on to seven people and your prayer will be granted,” or is expressed in prayers that rely more on many words (Matt. 6:7) and spiritual badgering of God than trust and obedience, such willfulness and its incantations are about magic—ways to manipulate spiritual power to do what we want.

Jesus will not press his will up against the Father’s, persuading God to do something other than what God himself initiates.

THE PRAYER

Lord of the Wild, we have used our own wills to get you to do what we want and ask. That is different than us being honest. That is about prioritizing our will over yours. Forgive us, and give us the will to do your will alone. In Jesus’s name, amen.

THE QUESTIONS

Have you ever, even for noble reasons, prayed in a way that was more about your will being done than the Father’s?

 

For the Awakening,
Dan Wilt

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

Comments and Discussion

6 Responses

  1. I believe that the “magic” type of prayer is done innocently by congregations every Sunday where laundry lists of prayer requests for healings and changes of circumstances are offered up to God without regard whether they are in line with His will are not. Worse than that are prayers that are structured to manipulate God into preforming some sort of miracle because we’ve used the precise method. I think this is the result of our failure to remember the part in Jesus’s model prayer “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven “.

  2. Have you ever noticed that a list of prayer requests is longer than a praise list? Most prayers are requests for God to meet our needs and wants. We focus on lack rather than gratitude. Our approach isn’t our direct fault; we are lost, living under deception and falsehood. But it’s our choice if we stay there.
    We want eternal joy and peace, but most settle for temporary pleasures while others hide behind the curtains of earthly addictions for reprieve.
    Unbeknownst to the most, our struggles result from not knowing our true identity in Christ. We know something is missing in our souls, so we search and perform in the world, hoping to find the answer to our emptiness this time. But the world doesn’t have it because the answer is the Creator of the world. Anything other than Christ, and life falls apart.

    Colossians 1:15:17
    15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

    The satan deceived Eve, and Adam jumped in, stealing their identities. The satan is the mastermind behind the original identity theft. Three different times he tried the same approach with Jesus.”If you…?”
    To Eve he said, “Did God really say…?”
    It worked on Adam.
    It didn’t work on Jesus.
    Is it working on you?

    1. With my NIV version of the Bible I also have where Satan asks Jesus starting with, “If you…?” but when I dug deeper in to the translation other versions of Bibles, (and for good reason), are translated from Greek to English saying, “Since you are…” and that actually does make more sense with the translation because of the Greek wording used.

  3. WHY DID PAUL CALL HIMSELF “THE CHIEF OF SINNERS”?
    Quick Answer:
    Some point to 1 Timothy 1:15 to make the argument that Christians are called “sinners” in the New Testament. However, Paul only referred to himself as a sinner in the 1 Timothy passage because of his history of persecuting the church (Galatians 1:13). He was referring to his condition before salvation. We, believers, are not sinners by nature anymore. We are saints who sometimes sin.

    Diving Deeper:
    Some believe Christians are simultaneously sinners and saints. To make their argument, they point to 1 Timothy 1:15 where Paul refers to himself as the “chief of sinners.” However, Paul was referring to his life before his conversion in this passage.

  4. I see some inaccuracies here within what scripture actually says but I will point out the major one I read. Jesus was NOT tempted for 40 days when he was in the wilderness, (or desert). The tempter AKA Satan came to Jesus after 40 days when Jesus was hungry when the first temptation was to turn the stones into bread. I am noticing the more and more I research scripture the more I’m noticing websites leading people astray by misinterpreting what the Bible actually says.

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