(3) If Jesus was to help people he had to know how they lived. And because he spent these thirty years in Nazareth, he knew the problems of making a living, the haunting insecurity of the life of the working man, the ill-natured customer, those who would not pay their debts. It is the glory of the incarnation that we face no problem of life and living which Jesus did not also face.
Here we have Luke’s genealogy of Jesus. The Jews were interested in genealogies. Genealogies, especially of the priests, who had to prove unbroken descent from Aaron, were kept among the public records. In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of priests who lost their office because they could not produce their genealogy (Ezra 2:61–3; Nehemiah 7:63–5).
But the problem of this genealogy is its relationship with that in Matthew 1:1–17. The facts are these – only Luke gives the section from Adam to Abraham; the section from Abraham to David is the same in both; but the section from David to Joseph is almost completely different. From the early days of New Testament study, an explanation has been sought for the differences.
(1) It is said that both genealogies are symbolic and that Matthew gives the royal descent of Jesus and Luke the priestly descent.
(2) One of the earliest suggestions was that Matthew in fact gives the genealogy of Joseph and Luke of Mary.
(3) The most ingenious explanation is as follows. In Matthew 1:16 Joseph’s father is Jacob; in Luke 3:23 it is Heli. According to the Jewish law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5f.) if a man died childless his brother must, if free to do so, marry the widow and ensure the continuance of the line. When that happened a son of such a marriage could be called the son either of the first or of the second husband. It is suggested that Joseph’s mother married twice. Joseph was in actual fact the son of Heli, the second husband, but he was in the eyes of the law the son of Jacob, the first husband who had died. It is then suggested that while Heli and Jacob had the same mother they had different fathers and that Jacob’s father was descended from David through Solomon and Heli’s father was descended from David through Nathan. This ingenious theory would mean that both genealogies are correct. In fact, all we can say is that we do not know.
Two things, however, are to be noted about the genealogy of Jesus which Luke gives.
(1) It stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It stresses the fact that he was truly one of us. He was no phantom or demigod. To save humanity he became in the most real sense a human.
(2) Matthew stops at Abraham; Luke goes right back to Adam. To Matthew, Jesus was the possession of the Jews; to Luke, he was the possession of all peoples, because his line is traced back not to the founder of the Jewish nation but to the founder of the human race. Luke removes the national and racial boundaries even from the ancestry of Jesus.
THE BATTLE WITH TEMPTATION
Luke 4:1–13
Jesus came back from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and for forty days he was tempted by the devil; and in those days he ate nothing, and when they were completed he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you really are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It stands written, “Man shall not live by bread alone.”’ He took him up and showed him in an instant of time all the kingdoms of the inhabited world. The devil said to him, ‘I will give you all this power and the glory of them, because it has been handed over to me, and I can give it to whomsoever I wish. If then you worship me all of it will be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It stands written, “You must worship the Lord God and him only must you serve.”’ He brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the Temple, and said to him, ‘If you really are the Son of God throw yourself down from here, for it stands written, “He has given his angels instructions concerning you, to take care of you, and they will bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.”’ Jesus answered him, ‘It has been said, “You must not try to test the Lord your God.”’ So when he had gone through the whole gamut of temptation, the devil left him for a time.
WE have already seen how there were certain great milestones in the life of Jesus, and here is one of the greatest. In the Temple when he was twelve there had come the realization that God was his Father in a unique way. In the emergence of John, the hour had struck and in his baptism God’s approval had come. At this time Jesus was just about to begin his campaign. Before beginning a campaign a leader must choose the methods to be employed. The temptation story shows us Jesus choosing once and for all the method by which he proposed to win men and women to God. It shows him rejecting the way of power and glory and accepting the way of suffering and the cross.
Before we go on to think of this story in detail there are two general points we must note.
(1) This is the most sacred of stories, for it can have come from no other source than Jesus’ own lips. At some time he must have himself told his disciples about this most intimate experience of his soul.
(2) Even at this time Jesus must have been conscious of quite exceptional powers. The whole point of the temptations is that they could have come only to a man who could do astonishing things. It is no temptation to us to turn stones into bread or leap from a Temple pinnacle, for the simple reason that it is impossible for us to do such things. These are temptations which could have come only to a man whose powers were unique and who had to decide how to use them.
First of all let us think of the scene, namely, the wilderness. The inhabited part of Judaea stood on the central plateau which was the backbone of southern Palestine. Between it and the Dead Sea stretched a terrible wilderness, thirty-five by fifteen miles. It was called Jeshimmon, which means ‘the Devastation’. The hills were like dust-heaps; the limestone looked blistered and peeling; the rocks were bare and jagged; the ground sounded hollow to the horses’ hooves; it glowed with heat like a vast furnace and ran out to the precipices, 1,200 feet high, which plunged down to the Dead Sea. It was in that awesome devastation that Jesus was tempted.
We must not think that the three temptations came and went like scenes in a play. We must rather think of Jesus deliberately retiring to this lonely place and for forty days wrestling with the problem of how he could win people over. It was a long battle which never ceased until the cross, and the story ends by saying that the tempter left Jesus – for a season.
(1) The first temptation was to turn stones into bread. This wilderness was not a wilderness of sand. It was covered by little bits of limestone exactly like loaves. The tempter said to Jesus, ‘If you want people to follow you, use your wonderful powers to give them material things.’ He was suggesting that Jesus should bribe people into following him. Back came Jesus’ answer in a quotation of Deuteronomy 8:3. ‘No one’, he said, ‘will ever find life in material things.’
The task of Christianity is not to produce new conditions, although the weight and voice of the Church must be behind all efforts to make life better. Its real task is to produce new men and women; and given the new men and women, the new conditions will follow.
(2) In the second temptation Jesus in imagination stood upon a mountain from which the whole civilized world could be seen. The tempter said, ‘Worship me, and all will be yours.’ This is the temptation to compromise. The devil said, ‘I have got people in my grip. Don’t set your standards so high. Strike a bargain with me. Just compromise a little with evil and people will follow you.’ Back came Jesus’ answer, ‘God is God, right is right and wrong is wrong. There can be no compromise in the war on evil.’ Once again Jesus quotes Scripture (Deuteronomy 6:13, 10, 20).
It