The Messiah and His Miracles

Chapter 4

Authenticating Miracles in the Synoptics

Prologue to the First Attesting Sign – the Serpent in Subjection

As Pharaoh had Israel in bondage in Egypt, so the Devil held Israel captive in the land of promise.  To liberate Israel, Moses had to overcome Pharaoh, the servant of Satan, but in the greater conflict between light and darkness, good and evil, Jesus had to overthrow Satan himself. Therefore, before the public ministry of the Messiah could take place Jesus had to face the evil one in the wilderness.  The Bible says He was ‘led’ there to face the Lord of evil. Matthew and Luke give us the most details of the conflict.

In both accounts, the first temptation is the challenge to turn stone into bread.  Jesus countered with a quote from the T’nach: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”[1]  The passage from which the quote was taken is in Deuteronomy, chapter 8.  “And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”[2]  Observe the highlighted words.  “The Lord … led you … to test you. … He allowed you to hunger, … that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord”.  The Messiah, recalling the events of the 40-year wilderness experience of Israel, and comparing them to His 40-day wilderness experience, concluded that in a similar manner the Spirit of God had led him there to test Him.  It was God Himself that permitted, nay required Him to be hungry. To yield to the insinuation that He would benefit by stepping outside the revealed will of God would alienate Him from His Father. As the last Adam He would have failed in a similar manner to the first Adam. What Satan did not include in his calculations was the fact that performing the will of God is both physically and spiritually nourishing.  Jesus Himself speaks of it at another time when He was again hungry and thirsty, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work”.[3] Since His condition was in the will of God, to seek to alleviate His hunger would put personal comfort above the purposes of God, and equate to disobedience of the command of God.  Jesus understood that His experience was not simply the enmity of the Adversary but also a test from God, as to whether He would keep His Father’s commandments, do His Father’s will.  The quote from the Torah was enough to close that avenue of temptation.

In the Garden of Eden, the pre-incarnate Christ cast down the serpent, symbolically demonstrating His power over Satan, the ‘cast down’ one.[4] In preparation for the exodus from Egypt, Moses, commissioned by God as Deliverer, re-enacted this same scene and the serpent was again ‘cast down’, re-affirming the continuing power and authority of God over Satan. The ministry of the ‘seed of the woman’ must demonstrate this same power and authority, and climax in the prophesied ‘bruising’ of the serpent’s head.[5]  However, the enemy of the Messiah is the Devil, who operates on the principle of ‘deception with a view to destruction’.   It was his ‘modus operandi’ in the Garden. 

Jesus referred to this element of deception when He said to the Jews, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do … When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it”.[6]  We are warned of the “wiles of the devil”.[7]  His followers are “deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light”.[8]

However, it is deception with a view to destruction.  Not only is he the father of lies but also a “murderer from the beginning”.[9] He is the Adversary, “a roaring lion” who goes about “seeking whom he may devour”.[10]

It is this deceiver, in the ‘one to one’, ‘face to face’ confrontation with the incarnate God, who attempts to cloud the issue and misdirect the Messiah into taking the position of the one ‘cast down’. Satan took Jesus up a very high mountain, showed Him all the splendour of the kingdoms of the world, and said, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”[11] It was inevitable that Satan would couch this temptation in terms that reflected the cause of his own downfall - personal ambition running counter to the will of God. Here, in the wilderness he tries to recover all lost ground with one throw of the dice.  What he had failed to do when he was the mighty, covering cherub, he tried to accomplish when the God that defeated him there was clothed in flesh. Jesus, weak with hunger, with limited resources, refused the offer and put His finger on the crux of the matter: “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.”[12]  Jesus rejected the offer of kingdoms, power and glory; and later reminded His followers that, “the kingdom, and the power and the glory” eternally belong to the Father.[13]

In the third of the temptations, Satan took Jesus to the top of the tower on the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount, where he challenged Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw (cast) Yourself down. For it is written: He shall give His angels charge over you, and, In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.”[14] This less than subtle effort was another attempt to get Jesus, Son of God, to occupy the position of the one ‘cast down’.  Israel’s Messiah, who must have been meditating on the trials and difficulties of Moses, His Messianic predecessor, responded to the Devil with another quote from Deuteronomy: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God”.[15]  The full quote is, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted Him in Massah.”  Massah is the Hebrew word for ‘tempted’, as recorded in Exodus: “so he called the name of the place Massah … because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?”[16]  Jesus, recalling this episode from the history of the wandering nation, used the quote from the speech of Moses to repulse the temptation, and affirm that God was with Him - a powerful riposte to the conditional challenge, “if You are the Son of God”. James encapsulated the essence of the narrative recorded here when he wrote, “… submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”[17]

After Satan had left Him, and angels had ministered to Him, He “returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.”[18].

The first attesting sign – the serpent in subjection

Luke, who testified that he put his gospel in chronological order,[19] used an event in which Jesus laid out His claim to be Messiah, to introduce the healing of a man with the spirit of an unclean devil. After the conflict with Satan in the wilderness, during which the Devil unsuccessfully tried to make Jesus the ‘cast down’ One, the carpenter’s Son presented Himself to His home congregation as Messiah.[20]  When the congregation questioned His authority to make such a claim Jesus sensed their unbelief and responded, “no prophet is accepted in his own country”.[21] He followed this statement with two examples of prophets ministering to Gentiles while Israel was in unbelief. Those people who had been fellow citizens of His in Nazareth were filled with a demonic fury and “rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and … led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff.”[22]   Having failed to manipulate the Messiah into being the ‘cast down’ one, here Satan inspired those that had been His neighbours, His customers, His friends, to enact it. It was another attempt to kill Him before His time and by a method that would reverse the prophecy of God. To bruise Satan’s head, Jesus would have to be the ‘lifted up’ One. The people of Nazareth tried to make Him the ‘cast down’ One.  Jesus “passing through the midst of them … went His way.”[23] A similar incident took place later in His ministry where He coined the more famous phrase that has now become a proverb: “A prophet is not without honour except in his own country”.^[24] To that incident, the writer added the post-script: “He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief”.

Rejected in Nazareth, the Messiah travelled to Capernaum, where in the synagogue, a man with the spirit of an unclean devil was troubled at the presence of the One who is stronger that Satan.[25] Jesus commanded the demon, “be quiet and come out of him”.[26]  With a last defiant flourish, it “cast down” the poor, possessed individual and then left him. This demonstration of Messianic control over Satan amazed everyone in the synagogue who talked of His authority and power.

Lightfoot points out that the phrasing of Scripture at this place is quite significant.[27]  The man had “a spirit of an unclean devil”. The Jews made a difference between an unclean spirit and an evil spirit; ‘evil spirit’ being the general term for the demon while ‘unclean spirit’ was the description of a demon that found its element among the tombs and other places that were most unclean.  The Gemmara speaks of the necromancer who visits burial places to be better inspired of an unclean spirit.[28]  Similarly, they understood those with the spirit of python, or the prophesying spirit to be of the same kind.  Here then is the significance of the Messiah’s first recorded exorcism, that it demonstrated the power of the Messiah over Satan, especially Satan seen as the Serpent (the spirit of python),[29] and Satan as an unclean Spirit, who had the power of death and produced in humans the fear of death.[30]

It is clear that the grip of Satan on the population would have to be broken before Israel could be free to accept (or reject) Jesus as their Messiah. The ministry of exorcism, conducted by the Messiah and His disciples, was essential to accomplish this. By the end of this particular day many of those possessed by demons had been healed, their devilish tormentors confessing as they were dismissed: “You are the Messiah, the Son of God”.[31]  Here is an indicator that demons were compelled to acknowledge the deity of Jesus as well as His Messianic office. These victories over demons were consequent upon the successful stand taken by Jesus in the wilderness, from which He had returned “in the power of the Spirit”.

The gospels also mention individual exorcisms, such as the Gadarene demoniac; and Mary, who had been possessed by seven devils.  The one in Luke 4 we have already noted, and then there will be the very important case in Matthew 12 when the Sanhedrists charged Jesus of being a servant to Beelzebub.

Jesus delegated this power over Satan’s domain to His disciples when He sent them out to the towns and villages of Israel: “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”[32] They exercised this power in the name of the Messiah.[33] Matthew described the power delegated to the twelve apostles: “And as you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”^[34] The early Church continued this ministry.[35]

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[1] Luke 4.4; Matt.4.4

[2] Deut.8.2,3

[3] John 4.34

[4] Satan  had already been cast down out of heaven. Cf. Lk.10.18

[5] Gen.3.15

[6] John 8.44

[7] Eph.6.11

[8] 2 Cor.11.13,14

[9] John 8.44

[10] 1 Pet.5.8

[11] Matt.4.8,9; Lk.4.5,6

[12] Matt.4.10

[13] Matt.6.13

[14] Matt.4.6; Lk.4.9-11

[15] Matt.4.7; Luke 4.12; Deut.6.16

[16] Exod.17.7

[17] James 4.7

[18] Lk.4.14

[19] Luke 1.1

[20] Lk.4.16-21 (see chapter 2)

[21] Luke 4.24

[22] Lk.4.29

[23] Lk.4.30

^[24]Mark 6.4; Matt.13.57

[25] Luke 4.33-36; 11.20-22

[26] Luke 4.35

[27] Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica pub.(Jan.2003) by Hendrickson, Vol.3.pp.76,77,140-142

[28] Gloss. In Sanhedrin, gol.65.2 (quoted by Lightfoot in his Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica pub.(Jan.2003) by Hendrickson, Vol.3.p.141.

[29] cf. Acts 16.16

[30] Heb.2.14,15

[31] Luke 4.41

[32] Luke 10.19

[33] Luke 10.17

^[34]Matt.10.7

[35] Acts 8.7; 16.18; 19.12