Humility & Temptation

Luke 4:16–30

Last week we learned about the gospel which includes the offer of salvation, the cost of discipleship, and the rewards for those who persevere. It seems like such a great deal and yet so many respond to God’s offer with, not just a “no,” but with anger at the idea they need a savior.

This has to do with sin and it’s no coincidence that Luke’s account of this event follows right after the temptation. In the wilderness, we see Jesus successfully defeat the devil and his temptations, but we can now see, through the actions of the crowd, how and why so many fail.

16 He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As usual, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him, and unrolling the scroll, He found the place where it was written: 

Luke 4:16-17

It’s important to remember that Jesus is preaching in Nazareth which was His hometown. This means that this was the synagogue he grew up in. He continued,

    18 The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me 

    to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim 

    freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, (Isaiah 61:1–2)

    to set free the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Leviticus 25)

Luke 4:16-19

The text goes on by listing the four groups of people Jesus came to help: the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed but these are not just literal, these are also powerful symbolic references to the state of a person's faith and life. Anyone can be poor and blind in their sin.

20 He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”

Luke 4:20-21

Here Jesus clearly declared himself to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. 

22 They were all speaking well of Him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from His mouth, yet they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” 

Luke 4:20-22

We see they liked what they heard but they knew Jesus since he was a boy. He was just the carpenter’s kid so they were struggling to understand where they fit into the story. 

23 Then He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. So all we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in Your hometown also.’” 24 He also said, “I assure you: No prophet is accepted in his hometown.”

This is very likely a reference to Aesop’s fable, “The Quack Frog,” where a frog comes out of the swamp and proclaims himself to be a skilled physician who can cure all illnesses but while the animals are listening, the fox points out that he walks funny and his skin is gross. So he says,

Doctor, heal yourself. Which means, quit boasting and prove it but Jesus had nothing to prove. 

25 “But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them—but to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. (1 Kings 17:7–16) 27 

And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had serious skin diseases, yet not one of them was healed —only Naaman the Syrian.” 

Luke 4:23-27

The problem was that they honestly did not believe they needed help. Because of their sin, they were the blind, poor, and oppressed prisoners. Their sin made them irrational, emotionally biased, and unwilling to even consider they might be a part of the problem which means the real issue is our arrogance and our pride.

28 When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged. 29 They got up, drove Him out of town, and brought Him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl Him over the cliff. 30 But He passed right through the crowd and went on His way. 

Lk 4:16–30

The problem was they saw themselves as the good guys, religious, the family-focused people among a world full of pagans, so they became furious at the idea that they might be the problem. Their pride blinded them to their own spiritual poverty. They couldn’t see their need.

The fact is you may not be starving but you can still be morally and spiritually poor. You may not be in prison but you may still be a slave to money, guilt, sex, porn, anger, drugs, and Satan. You may have 20/20 vision but you might still be blind to your sin, blind to your fear, and blind to your blessings. 

When it comes to oppression, many of us have been abused. Abuse can destroy lives but Christ offers us a way to take back control but, to be free, you must choose to stop being a victim and find your victory in Christ. We all want to be free but we don’t want the responsibility and work that comes with it and that is where the devil comes in: his offer is always a sinful short-cut. 

1. Man must not live on bread alone 

In the first temptation of Christ, Jesus had been fasting and the devil called his identity into question. He said, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” And even though he was hungry, Jesus responded with, “Man must not live on bread alone.”

This explains the first biblical story of Elijah bypassing the Jewish women and helping a Gentile widow. In the story, there is a famine, people are hungry, and God commands Elijah to find this woman. He finds her and she says she is planning to eat her last meal and die with her son.

Elijah tells her to make him some bread first and to share the rest with her son. She obeyed and this led to God filling her empty barrels full of food so that she was able to feed her family. The point is that we must not live on bread alone; we must also live on faith.

After hearing the tiniest glimpse of hope from this prophet, the widow chose to be faithful and trust God and she proved her faith by choosing to sacrifice a portion of her last meal with this stranger. The question is, if her barrels were already full, would she have obeyed?

Jesus’ point to the crowd was that no matter how successful you are or how happy you feel or confident you are; you must be like the widow and recognize that you are desperately spiritually poor. It was the widow’s desperation that helped her overcome whatever pride she had left.

2. Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only 

In the second temptation, Jesus was offered the chance to bypass the pain of his sacrifice on the cross by simply worshipping Satan. Jesus refused and said, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.” This is the second lesson from the story of Naaman. 

The second story comes from 2 Kings 5:1–15, where Naaman, a pagan general from Syria, was struggling with a skin disease. So, one of Naaman’s Israeli slaves suggested to his wife that he go to Israel and ask to be healed by the prophet Elisha. 

Naaman was desperate and knew he couldn’t heal himself, so with a glimmer of hope, he went to a foreign land to find his healing. When he arrived, Elisha’s student told him to go dip himself in the Jordan River 7 times. When he heard this he, like the crowd, was furious.

He believed he was special. He expected an audience with this “great” prophet. He expected Elisha to wave his hand and do some magic. He expected to be entertained and dazzled but all he got was a student and a command to take a dip in this nasty river. He said there were better rivers in Syria and he almost left but his servants encouraged him to just try it and he was cured. 

The point is that, despite his anger and pride, he chose to humble himself. He, the general of the Syrian army, listened to his wife and his servants and he chose to be humiliated by submitting to this foreigner’s stupid command to jump into a muddy river. This humility brought him to God.

“I know there’s no God in the whole world except in Israel…your servant will no longer offer a burnt offering or a sacrifice to any other god but Yahweh.”

II Kings 5:15-17 

He humbled himself and in the end chose to worship the Lord God and serve Him only. 

3. Do not test the Lord your God 

When Jesus was tempted to prove his identity as the son of God and throw himself off a cliff, but he told Satan he had nothing to prove and that we do not test the Lord our God. With the same attitude, the crowd wanted to test Jesus. Even though he had already done miracles they wanted him to do some more. They believed they were special. They wanted to be entertained. 

The crazy thing is, these people had seen Jesus grow up. They knew his character firsthand. He had never lied or cheated and he was never unkind. He was the most loving, thoughtful, and wise person they had ever known and yet they expected him to prove himself again and again.

In the end, they rejected Jesus because they could not imagine that they were not special. They believed they were better than other people. They believed they were good enough. They didn’t need help; they deserved to be served and entertained. We say, “No. We will not test our God.” 

Interestingly, even the devil was nice enough to ask Jesus to jump off the cliff but these people took it further than Satan himself and they argued about whether or not they should throw him over the cliff themselves. Their pride, anger, insecurity, and lack of humility drove them to take the messiah, who was a friend they grew up with, and they chose to see him as an enemy.

The thing is it’s not just the rich and well-off who are less likely to be aware of their spiritual poverty, like the crowds, we are all prone to believe and feel we are good enough which just means you think you are better than other people.

Someone might say, “I don’t think I’m better!”

Yes you do. If you think you are good enough then you don’t have to improve which means you have already arrived which means you are the bar that you judge people by. If you have already arrived then those who do not like you, who don’t agree with you, who don’t do what you do are all obviously stupid and bad which means you think you are obviously better than other people.

Only by comparing ourselves to Christ do we get to see who we truly are. Only by comparing ourselves to our God do we realize our desperate need to do and be better because we are not good enough and we are not better than anyone else. 

By comparison to Christ, we are all poor, blind, oppressed captives of our own sin and only Jesus can save us. 

pray