Sample Class from "The Gospel of Luke"

Hello dear reader,
This week I shall attempt to entertain you with my notes from Monday's class. We have "The Gospel of Luke" four times a week from 9-10 AM. Hopefully the notes below will give you an idea of the kind of things we learn at CEM and the kind of thinking we do. Please note that these are only my notes and that you are not at all getting the full CEM experience.

The Temptation of Jesus

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 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. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’" 5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’" 9 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. 10 For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 12 Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’" 13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

Lecture Thesis: Jesus’ life mirrors the nation of Israel except that, when Israel failed, Jesus succeeds.

First, His baptism parallels the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
After the Israelites cross the Red Sea they spend 40 years in the desert: Jesus faces 40 days of temptation.
The temptations Satan presents mirror temptations faced by the Israelites.
In Greek, temptation and test are the same word. Temptation/tests bring out what is inside of us.
The devil gives Jesus three tests. The goal of the tests is to turn Jesus away from his program of suffering. In each test, the devil proposes a counter-programs to Jesus’ Messianic program, all of which avoid suffering.

1 Temptation: to avoid/end his own hunger.
Hunger and exhaustion are a form of adversity. What’s wrong with being hungry, and what’s wrong with eating?
In the desert, the Israelites don't want to suffer hunger: they whine until they get what they want,(Numbers 11:4-6) just as children who always get what they want are spoiled. They don’t suffer. Jesus waits for his food and suffers.
2nd Temptation: To rule the world using the methods of Satan.
God alone is sovereign over the nations but he allows Satan to exercise a lot of influence on the world. Satan's control is shown in the use of lies, seduction, violence, the thirst for glory, militarism, injustice, cults of power etc. The Israelites tried adopting other gods to gain control over the Canaanites when they invade their lands. They were using the methods of Satan to accomplish the will of God. The conquistadors are a good example of christians deceived into thinking they could use methods of violence to accomplish God's will, telling the natives: "convert or we’ll kill you."
At the time of Jesus, the Jews wanted a political Messiah and they supported many false Messiahs who proposed to free them from the Roman's using Satan’s method of violence.
If Jesus uses Satan's methods to accomplish the will of God, he will have failed in his mission because it is impossible to accomplish God's will using Satan's methods.

3rd Temptation: To be protected from all suffering and danger.
The israelites believed "God is with us, all will go well" (Exodus 17:7). Jesus uses his power to accomplish the will of his Father, which is to die for us. He follows God's will and he suffers.

In all of these tests, Satan tries to get Jesus to keep his distance from the common people. Do a miracle to feed yourself, become ruler of the world, call on the angels to save you. Satan wants to keep Jesus from identifying with us. Part of Jesus' mission is experiencing what it is like to be human. Why?
God wants to destroy sin without destroying the sinner. To do this, Jesus must be able to identify with man! Jesus is our representative with the father. Praise the Lord that he succeeded in being the 2nd Adam, in resisting temptation to which every other human in history has fallen, and at the same time, learning what it is like to be human.