This is a copy of my talk given at Ayia Kyriaki and Saint Luke’s in the Anglican Church of Paphos on Sunday 9 March 2025. The Bible reading was Luke 4:1-13.

Prayer

Heavenly Father,
I thank You for Your word.
By the power of Your Holy Spirit,
May You speak to my heart,
And change my life.
In the precious name of Jesus I pray.
Amen.

Introduction

Did you notice that it was immediately after Jesus’ baptism that he was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  Isn’t that normally the way life is?  We have spiritual mountain-top experiences that change our lives – perhaps a wonderful experience of God’s grace, love, mercy and healing and then BANG! We come crashing back to earth with a bump!

Our readings today are not so much about ‘temptation’ as about true worship. Jesus recognized his temptations as distractions from worshipping and trusting the one true God. To see temptation in terms of rules we would like to break, or impulses we must learn to tame, is to see temptation itself in terms of negatives. The truth is very different. Every moment, God calls us to know, love and worship him, and in so doing to find and celebrate our genuine humanity, and reflect his image in the world. Temptations lure us to turn away from that privilege and invitation, to lower our gaze, shorten our sights, and settle for second best – or worse. This morning, I want us to think about:

Five Ways Jesus Resisted the Temptation of the Devil

4:1–2: 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.

1. Filled with the Holy Spirit: Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. There is a great mystery surrounding how the Trinity inter-relate. But the least we can say is that the divine nature of Jesus did not cancel out his human nature; and therefore, as a human in the trenches with us he took the same power offered to us in the Holy Spirit.

2. Forty Days of Solitude: With that fullness the Holy Spirit led him into forty days of solitude, not isolation. And this wasn’t the only time: Luke 5:16 shows that Jesus often went away alone. Jesus went away from family and friends and crowds and lived in the desert for forty days. That’s almost six weeks. No radio. No television. No computers. No Wi-Fi access. Seems almost unmanageable, doesn’t it? Might it be that preparing to do God’s work demands significant times of solitude and prayer. We’ll look at these during our Lent Course on Spiritual Disciplines. 

3. Forty Days of Fasting: During these forty days of solitude Jesus didn’t eat anything. Why should the perfect Son of God go without? To demonstrate that he was not enslaved by anything but God. Many, during Lent, practice some form of abstinence: chocolate, alcohol, TV, Social Media. And this discipline of fasting is not a bad thing when our culture is utterly obsessed with the instantaneous and immediate and it can be seen in almost every area. We want instant food; TV programmes when we want, instant messaging, real-time meetings and instant downloads of music, films or books. We don’t ‘do’ waiting anymore. I quite like the idea that many of the food outlets in The Mall (and elsewhere) change their menu to exclude those items of food which shouldn’t be eaten during the Orthodox Lent.

In the 1970’s the famous ‘Stanford Marshmallow Experiment’ was carried out. It was a psychological study involving a group of four-year-old children. Each child was given one marshmallow and promised that, if they could wait twenty minutes before eating it, they would be given a second one. Some children could wait the twenty minutes and others couldn’t. Sixteen years later the university researchers revisited the children and found that those who had been able to delay eating were scoring significantly higher in academic tests. And so, deliberately delaying a pleasure (and that’s what fasting in Lent is all about) and by learning to say ‘no, not now’ just as Jesus did, teaches us self-control and gives us an expectation/ anticipation of what God may reveal to us during the Season of Lent.

4. Forty Days of holding firm to the truth: Luke gives us three examples of the temptations from the OT the devil threw at Jesus; 

vs3 “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’

 vs5 “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 splendour, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.  So, if you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

vs9 “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. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Holding to the truth of God is vital in fighting against the evil one. Truth lets us see the real issues and allows us to expose all the lies that the devil uses against us. The importance of having minds that are centred on God’s truth in this way is emphasized in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he commands the church to be ‘strong with the Lord’s mighty power’ and to ‘put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil’ In Ephesians 6:10-11 describes the ‘belt of truth’ in armour of God.

Daily Prayers for the Armour of God

5. Forty Days of Combat: Notice that vs2 says… for forty days he was tempted by the devil For forty days Jesus was in combat with the enemy, defending himself in the power of the Holy Spirit against the fiery darts of self-pity and loneliness and fear and the pain of his fasting and the awful temptation of murmur against God – how just like our own experiences. As followers of Jesus, we should believe in the existence of the devil, but not see him everywhere; we should be aware of him, but not fear him. When you feel attacked by him, don’t try to deal with him directly, simply refer him to Jesus.

There’s a story told of Saint Augustine who, when sleeping one night became aware of a presence at the bottom of his bed during the night.  And so, he lit a candle, got out of bed to see who it was and saw the devil himself.  His response was: Oh, it’s only you. Blew out the candle and went back to bed!

It’s not unusual to hear Christians talk about how they grew in their faith through some particular test or trial.

The Devil’s Failure

Jesus faced some very real temptations before he began his public ministry. The devil knew what he was doing. And the same is the case with us. We will always be tempted to live for ourselves, to take control of our lives and to focus on success rather than faithfulness. But Jesus teaches us that through prayer and Scripture, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can live for others, we can trust God with our lives, and we can be faithful.

It might be tempting to think that the Christian’s best strategy is to keep a low profile and stay out of high-risk situations. This is not the advice of the NT and it certainly was not the strategy of the early church. Amid the warnings about the devil, there are also encouragements to take the offensive against him (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you’ (James 4:7-8). In other words, we are to put up a fight. 

Just as Jesus did. In the wilderness, and on the cross, and everywhere in between, Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations. He didn’t listen to Peter, who tried to convince him to stay away from Jerusalem and certain death. He didn’t call on the army of angels, who were eager to fight for him, even when the Son of God was arrested. And even as he lay dying on the cross, Jesus refused to save himself. And because he didn’t, he defeated the devil, once and for all. We don’t have to fear the devil anymore. Because Jesus has defeated him for us. Which means that no matter what is happening in our lives, no matter the temptations and trials and tests we might be going through, we can turn to Jesus, and he will be there for us, to lead us and guide us all along the way.

Conclusion

Everyone will be tempted by ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ as the words of the baptism service remind us. Those temptations may be glaring or subtle, but they will come. You need to be prepared to overcome the lies, the slander, the emotions and your own desires. You can have victory over the temptations that come your way if you follow Jesus’ example. But it’s worth remembering that Jesus didn’t defeat the devil by quoting Scripture. Jesus defeated the devil by knowing the Scriptures and obeying them.

In order to overcome temptation, you need to be diligent in your own time of personal prayer and Bible study. You need to be faithful in worship and you need to be able to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit … Knowledge of God’s word and walking in the Spirit are the foundations for victory over temptation. So might applying Spiritual Disciplines to your life and you can find out more about them on the Lent Course which starts on Tuesday 11 March.

Do you know the truth well enough that you can stand firm when deceptions come? Can you stand strong when your emotions are in confusion and seeking to lead you astray? Will temptation be for you a testing of your faith that makes you stronger and more mature, or the path to sin and defeat? My prayer is that it will make you stronger and more mature in your faith. 

 

Lent Course 2025: A Deeper Walk

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER The text contained in this sermon (except where stated) is solely owned by its author, Revd Paul A. Carr. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name.