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Lesson One of the Book of Daniel,
Introduction to the Book of Daniel
Luke 4:1-13,
And Jesus being full of the
Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
2Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat
nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. 3And the
devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be
made bread. 4And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. 5And the
devil, taking him up into an high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of
the world in a moment of time. 6And the devil said unto him, All this
power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me;
and to whomsoever I will I give it. 7If thou therefore wilt worship
me, all shall be thine. 8And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get
thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and him only shalt thou serve. 9And he brought him to Jerusalem, and
set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of
God, cast thyself down from hence: 10For it is written, He shall give
his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: 11And in their
hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a
stone. 12And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt
not tempt the Lord thy God. 13And when the devil had ended all the
temptation, he departed from him for a season.
In
chapter three we have seen how Jesus Christ is identified as the Son of God
by the Father and as the Son of Man by a careful listing of the human
ancestry of Jesus Christ.
Both the deity and the humanity of the Lord
Jesus have been well documented by Luke in the first three chapters.
Jesus
Christ is the God-man and is also known as the last Adam as Paul refers to him
in I Cor. 15:45.
As we
know Adam was tested in the Garden of Eden and his testing resulted in failure
and that failure passed on to all men for because of that failure all men are
spiritually dead and cannot know God in that state of death.
So Jesus
Christ as the last Adam also faced testing because, from the standpoint of our
Lord’s ministry and calling, His entire mission is
conditional upon His victory over every temptation or testing of Satan.
If salvation is to be provided for He cannot
fail as did the first Adam.
Luke has shown us our Lord’s qualifications
for His task of redeeming fallen man.
As the “Son of God” and the “Son of man”
Jesus was the only one who could die in man’s place and provide an eternal
redemption.
But as Adam was
tested in the Garden this last Adam Jesus will also be tested as the “Son of
God,” Israel’s Messiah and King.
To fail these
tests would be to invalidate all of God’s promises and purposes which were only
to be accomplished through the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is good to us
in providing this account of the temptation or testing of Christ because it
reveals to us a great deal about Satan, our enemy,.
In the three
challenges of Satan to Christ there are three ways by which Satan seeks to take
over our lives in order to destroy our spiritual walk with God through Christ.
We are to put on
the whole armor of God and if we know what weapons Satan uses we will be
prepared for his onslaughts.
But most of all we
learn in this account that the weapon with which to resist the devil is that
which Christ used, the Word of God.
For every
challenge from Satan we are to use God’s word for it is quick and powerful and
sharper than any two edged sword.
Let us read again Luke 4:1-2,
And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost
returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2Being
forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when
they were ended, he afterward hungered.
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