The Life of the Messiah

His Temptation

In Luke’s account the third temptation (in Matthew it is the second) brought another change of scenery. Satan took Jesus to the top of the tower on the south-western corner of the Temple Mount, where he challenged Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw (cast) Yourself down. For it is written: He shall give His angels charge over you, and, In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against      a stone” (Matt.4:6; Luke 4:9-11). This less than subtle effort was another attempt to get Jesus, Son of God, to occupy the position of the one ‘cast down’.  Israel’s Messiah, who must have been meditating on the trials and difficulties of Moses, His Messianic predecessor, responded to the Devil with another quote from Deuteronomy: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Matt.4:7; Luke 4:12; Deut.6:16). The full quote is, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted Him in Massah.” Massah is the Hebrew word for ‘tempted’, as recorded in Exodus: “so he called the name of the place Massah … because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exod.17:7) Jesus, recalling this episode from the history of the wandering nation, used the quote from the speech of Moses to repulse the temptation, and affirm that God was with Him - a   powerful  riposte  to  the  conditional challenge,  “if You are the Son God”. James encapsulates not only the thrust and parry of the     conflict but also the outcome when he wrote, “… submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

After Satan had left Him, and angels had ministered to Him, He “returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region”. (Luke 4:14)

Although Jesus had successfully repulsed the Devil in the Judean wilderness it did not end Satan’s attacks. When He presented Himself to His home congregation in Nazareth as Messiah,  they questioned His authority to make such a claim. Jesus sensed their unbelief and responded, “no prophet is accepted in his own country” (Luke 4:24). He followed this statement with two examples of prophets ministering to Gentiles while Israel was in unbelief. Those people who had been fellow citizens of His were filled with a demonic fury and “rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and … led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff” (Luke 4:29). Having failed to manipulate the Messiah into being the ‘cast down’ one, here Satan inspired those that had been His neighbours, His customers, His friends, to enact it. It was another attempt to kill Him before His time and by a method that would     reverse the prophecy of God. To bruise Satan’s head, Jesus would have to be the ‘lifted up’ One. The people of Nazareth tried to make Him the ‘cast down’ One.  Jesus “passing through the midst of them … went His way” (Luke 4:30) A similar incident took place later in His ministry where He coined the more famous phrase that has now become a proverb: “A prophet is not without honour except in his own country” (Mark 6:4; Matt.13:57). Of those in Nazareth the biographer stated: “He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matt.13:58).

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