FRIDAY October 18th
Luke 4:13
‘And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.’
Luke has only recorded three specific temptations, but he does say that for forty days, Jesus was being tempted by the devil. And the three recorded follow on from Luke saying, ‘And when they were ended’, that is the forty days. So, many other temptations would have taken place. And from our text today we can be sure that other temptations would have followed during the three ministry years of Jesus. But straight on from the verse today in verse 14 we read ‘And Jesus returned in the power of the Holy Spirit’.
Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit as he went into the wilderness experience and let’s note that he was also led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness experience, and there is no doubt that he was sustained by the Holy Spirit as he went through the wilderness experience, for he came though the other side of the experience in the power of the Holy Spirit.
O how we need the Holy Spirit in our lives today. Temptation is all around us, and in and of ourselves we would find it very difficult to avoid falling into the temptations, but the Holy Spirit equips us with power to say no and to be victorious. And not only so, when the disciples asked the Lord Jesus to teach them to pray, part of the prayer he encouraged them to say was ‘and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’, and so we can pray each day that we will not fall into temptation. And then a third factor, of which we are reminded by the Hebrew writer is that Jesus as our example, has known what it is to be tempted in all points, that is in the many ways in which we are tempted, and yet he managed to remain without sin. Therefore, he is able to help us when we are tempted to overcome the temptations and to give us the enabling strength to be victorious, Hebrews 2:18, 4:15.
In one of the older hymns, the story is told of the man who sat by the roadside begging, and of how Jesus came by and met him and delivered him. The chorus of the hymn continues with:
When Jesus comes the tempter’s power is broken,
When Jesus comes the tears are wiped away,
He takes the gloom and fills the life with glory,
For all is changed when Jesus comes to stay.
The tempters power is broken! The devil has no control over us! if you know Jesus as your Saviour, learn to recognise the power that is available for you and I for myself to overcome the temptations that the devil throws out across our pathway. The same hymn has as the final verse
So men today (and women) have found the Saviour able,
They could not conquer passion, lust and sin,
Their broken hearts had left them sad and lonely,
Then Jesus came and dwelt, himself within.
Let us all allow the One who himself when tempted, yielded not into the temptation, help us to also not give in when being tempted and to stand strong.