Luke 4

It is an unexamined assumption of many that the Holy Spirit always leads us into situations of comfort and joy. This fits in with our larger guess that the Lord is a therapeutic god who exists to make everything right as we define it and according to our schedule. The experience of Jesus after His baptism by John does not fit well with that kind of assumption. We are expressly told in Luke’s gospel that it was the Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness in order to suffer hunger and to be tempted by the devil. Can there be any doubt among those who rightly understand Jesus’ sinless life that He was always perfectly led by the Holy Spirit? He was always led by the Spirit of God, even into much suffering and ultimately to the cross. It is also a fact that those who would be led by the Spirit today will need to follow Jesus. The Lord Himself insists that those who would follow Him must also travel to glory along the way of sacrificial love.

Why would it have been the plan of God to send His beloved Son off into a place without food in order to face a cruel adversary? It should be clear that the one who came as a representative for us before God would have to be tested. Jesus faces a trial in the wilderness that we cannot help but compare with that of the first Adam in Paradise. Everything in the first Adam’s environment should have moved him to obey God. Everything in the second Adam’s environment of trial seems to heighten the level of difficulty, so that even a strong man would be pulled in the direction of rebellion. Yet the Adam sinned for us, and Jesus, the second Adam, obeyed for us.

The adversary in both tests is that evil angel of old, the devil, who deceived the woman in the garden, and sought the fall of mankind in Adam. His tactics fit the new situation He faces here. He attempts to lure Jesus away from His appointed task, trying to set the agenda for our Lord’s ministry. It is hard to know how much Satan actually understood about the cross before the great victory of Christ’s atoning death was accomplished. Yet he did not need to know everything about the plan of God to make a mess of it, only to move the Son of God in the direction of some other path. Make Him try to prove Himself by turning stones into bread. Lure Him with a consummation kingdom of the devil’s design, rather than the resurrection heaven and earth in God’s eternal plan. Challenge Him into some display of the spectacular to prove His greatness, instead of the simple way of humble obedience that will be the pathway to glory that God has ordained. All of these things are rejected using the Word of God. Jesus defeated the devil in the wilderness, but this would not be the final engagement against this fallen angelic adversary. He would be back again at what Luke calls “an opportune time,” most likely referring to every temptation presented to Him on the way to the cross, and at the time of His death itself.

It was also by the Spirit that our Lord would be off to Galilee in the early days of ministry, visiting His home synagogue in Nazareth, a place where He would be rejected by people who thought that they knew who He was. He was most forthright in identifying the truth of His identity, again using the Scriptures. Here is Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord, full of the Spirit of the Lord, bringing good news to the poor, and working resurrection miracles, giving sight to the blind, freedom to the captives, and release for those held in bondage. Jesus identifies Himself as the key figure for eternal spiritual and physical Jubilee for God’s people. He is the fulfillment of Scripture. He is the Messiah, the anointed Son of God.

This visit home that seemed to be going peacefully for a time quickly turned into a display of the murderous intentions of those around Jesus. They marveled at His gracious words, but when He spoke against them in favor of God bringing His grace to Gentiles, we are told that everyone was suddenly incensed, even desirous of throwing Him off of a cliff. This kind of behavior does not come from the Holy Spirit, but from some other source. Yet it was not yet time for Jesus to die, and He simply passed through their midst and went away.

However strong the devil and His allies may seem, and they do seem to have knowledge that Jesus of Nazareth is the Holy One of God, they are not able to stop the saving plan of God. The agenda of these demonic agents is the same as their fallen master, for they would distract from the ministry of Jesus through their statements that seem to give great and true names to the Lord. He has no need for these spirits to get the word out. They must be gone at His command, just as every illness must give way to the touch and the word of resurrection from His lips.

This ministry of Christ, though not seeking a crowd, naturally caused great crowds to come. We are longing for life beyond the fall. We want healing with authority. We want evil to be cast far away. In the ministry of Jesus we see these things plainly before us. He came to preach the good news of the fulfillment of God’s gracious plans. Every good hint of real life coming to us from the words of the Law and the prophets was now being presented before the eyes of God’s people.

We who serve Christ today do not often see what people saw in the earthly ministry of Jesus, but we hear the news of it in the Word, and we proclaim the truth of it by the power of the Holy Spirit. This same Spirit that assures us that the cross of Christ has become our salvation does not always lead us in pathways of comfort, but He will lead us in pathways of righteousness. We may suffer for His name’s sake in this life. Nonetheless, the cross was not the end of the story for Him, and it will not be the end for us. The same Spirit that led Jesus into a time of great testing will one day fill us with all the fullness of heavenly life. It is our privilege to follow Him in trial and to be welcomed by Him into glory.