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Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 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 (Luke 4:1-2).

With Pastor Anthony having been on vacation last week, neither of us prepared anything for yesterday. We apologize for that.

With that out of the way, let us return to Luke\u2019s account of Jesus life and ministry. You may recall that in the early chapters Luke has been exploring who Jesus is, ending his genealogy with \u2018the son of Adam, the son of God.\u2019 We have here the doctrine of the incarnation which comes to us in story form not with theological precision.

In Luke\u2019s account of Jesus\u2019 temptations by the devil, we see both his humanity and his divinity in full display. This account is given to us both for our instruction and our encouragement.

Our text for today is just the introduction, but it is worth some exploration. Why does Luke say that Jesus was \u2018full of the Holy Spirit\u2019? Was he less filled at other times of his life? Not enough information is provided to give full answer. It seems clear that something significant happened at Jesus baptism which prepared him to begin his public ministry.

It is also worth noting that Paul tells us to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and Luke will tell us that Barnabas was \u2018a man full of the Spirit\u2019 (Acts 11:24). It seems that sometimes we Christians are more filled with the Spirit then at other times. It ought to be our desire and goal to be fully directed by the Spirit and we ought to live in ways that give the Spirit sway over us.

Our text takes us back to the Garden of Eden where the tempter is first introduced. There, our first parents had everything they could possibly want, after all, God\u2019s declaration, \u201cIt was very good\u201d, still held sway. Jesus is not in such a situation. He is in a place of deprivation, facing physical hardships Adam and Eve had not yet imagined.

Jesus is \u2018the son of Adam.\u2019 Will he fair better than Adam himself? That is a question answered in this story.

A second biblical call back is to Israel in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land. The assumption is that Jesus spent 40 days in that wilderness. The Israelites had manna every morning, Jesus had nothing. By the end he was hungry; hungrier than most of us have ever been. Will he do better than the Israelites? Another question answered. \xa0

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These temptations by the devil begin Jesus\u2019 ministry. This tells us what the primary struggle is. His battle was not against the power hungry abusive Roman empire, nor was it against the false piety of the Pharisees, nor against the scarcity of food and health among the general population. Those were only symptoms of the real problem. His real battle was against the devil.

I wonder if we have forgotten this. We do well to fight against poverty and homelessness and human trafficking and lack of access to health care and all the other injustices that we see around us. Yet, among all these battles, the primary battle is still for the human heart, for the redemption of the human being. Even those of us redeemed in Christ, must still guard our hearts and fight against personal temptations first.

Luke makes it abundantly clear that Jesus, the New Israel, the son of Adam and the son of God, resisted the temptations. He won! And now he fills us with His Holy Spirit; we too can resist the wiles of the devil. There is hope for all who follow behind the rider on the white horse (see Revelation 19).