Don't lose your spot (Conclusion) Luke 4:1-13 Dr. Harrell Jr.

Bishop Dr. William R. Harrell Jr. concludes on this commencement message Don't let opportunity cause you to lose your spot. (Luke 4:1-13) When Jesus was tempted of the devil, He stood his ground never lost his spot. Temptation will come for all of us but, don't lose your spot. Led by the Spirit into Temptation (4:1-2) The work, however, begins with a time of intensive preparation. Notice the role of the Holy Spirit in this preparation. Jesus is described as "full of the Holy Spirit." The event at the Jordan was profoundly significant. Now Jesus is "led" by the Spirit in the desert. Mark's Gospel uses much stronger language: "The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness" (Mark 1:12). The verb in Mark is ekballo, "to cast out, to drive out." This leading wasn't a gentle one, but perhaps almost a compulsion. Jesus had been baptized and filled with the Spirit; now he must go into the desert. Bear with me for a bit of technical observation that helps me get the picture here. In Luke the Greek verb "led" is ago, "3. Figuratively, of the working of the Spirit on man, 'lead, guide,' passive, 'be led, allow oneself to be led.' "[1] The imperfect tense of the verb suggests that Jesus was continuously led by the Spirit during these 40 days. With a verb of action such as "lead" I expected to find the Greek preposition eis, "in, into," which carries the idea of "motion into a thing or into its immediate vicinity."[2] But the preposition found in this verse is Greek en, which has the idea of "in, within." In other words, the text indicates that the Spirit didn't just send Jesus off into the desert and deposit him there to struggle with the devil. Rather the Spirit continuously led Jesus in the desert area for the 40 days. He wasn't left alone. The Spirit went with him throughout the entire time. Why the desert? Jesus wasn't yet ready to enter into his public ministry, so the desolate wilderness of the Jordan plain north of the Dead Sea, and the arid Judean hills west of the Dead Sea were places he could be alone. I'm sure he communed with his Father during this time. And, as we'll see from the nature of his temptations, the shape and meaning of his Messiahship were determined here. The desert, of course, was John the Baptist's home, and was also the place where Moses and Elijah had fasted and encountered the Lord (Exodus 24:18; 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9, 18, 25; 1 Kings 19:8). Fasting has a way of temporarily lifting the tyranny of preparing and eating food to assuage physical hunger. It allows one to focus on the spiritual realm more intently. After the first few days, the hunger pangs subside some as the body's metabolism changes. Fasting can produce a clarity of mind and spirit. Was the forty days a literal time period? Perhaps not. The number forty is used so often in the Bible that it seems to be a rounded rather more than an exact figure, much as we might say "a month" in an imprecise manner.[3] In any case, Jesus spent a long time in the desert. A long time to be tempted. A long time to fast.

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YouTube | October 15, 2008

Tags:. .imprecise. .eis. .assuage. .arid. .pangs