Experiencing Temptation

Luke 4:1-4:13
Last week we saw that the previous chapter of Luke dealt with Jesus’ baptism. During this baptism we saw Jesus anointed by the Holy Spirit in the appearance of a dove, and we heard God the Father affirm Jesus by saying, “You are my Son, whom I love. With You I am well pleased.” With such glowing words, one might expect God’s tasks for Jesus to be easy. But as we shall see that with God, “love” does not mean the same thing as “easy.”

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, 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. – Luke 4:1-2

Why does Luke reiterate that Jesus is “full of the Holy Spirit”? In other locations in Luke we have seen that when he uses this wording he is saying that the person is being led by the Holy Spirit. In fact, in the parallel passage in the gospel of Mark, we see a much stronger wording:

Preparing the Way

Luke 3:1-3:38
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. – Luke 3:1-3

As we have seen in previous weeks in this series, Luke establishes the factual nature of his account with details about the leadership and the time of the events. He is telling his audience that the things they have heard about Jesus are not just stories but fact.

Here he comes back to talking about John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Recall what the angel Gabriel had said of John before his birth:

He will be a joy and delight to you [Zechariah], and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. – Luke 1:14-17

Signs and Wonders

Luke 2:1-2:52

Those of you who are fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy know that the huge epic story is really about the end of an age in the universe of Middle Earth. By the end of the story, after the “one ring” has been destroyed, one age has come to an end, and another has begun, the “Age of Men.”

What about our universe, the real one? Is our history one than can be separated into ages? Yes, I think so. There is certainly more than one way to do it. Matthew, in the first chapter of his gospel, provides a genealogy that is divided into three groups: from Abraham to David, from David to the exile in Babylon, and from the exile to the birth of Christ. This is certainly a valid (and Biblical) way to do it, although it doesn’t go back to the very beginning, but instead begins with Abraham.

Foretelling

Luke 1:1-1:80

Today we begin a new series on the Gospel of Luke. Last year we went through the Book of Acts, also written by Luke. So we are doing these in “reverse order.” I figure if it worked out for Star Wars, and apparently, will work out for The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, it should work out OK for us.

I want to briefly mention some of the things we learned about Luke from the book of Acts. There we saw that Luke was painstakingly careful with accuracy and, often, but not always, detail. He did not sugar-coat things, and he did not make the Apostle Paul out to be a superhero – in fact, he was careful to lay out the good as well as the bad. He never tried to defend the early church, but simply to say what had happened.