By David ReayFriday 2 Sep 2016LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Luke 4:1-4
1 Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.
3 Then the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
4 But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone.’” (NLT)
The American poet Robert Frost once wrote: “Two roads diverged in a wood. I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”
In the wilderness prior to his rescue mission in the world, Jesus was tempted by the evil one to take a well-travelled road. Become a materialistic Messiah who would satisfy the hunger of famine-ridden Palestine. No one would crucify him. He would be in great demand. Note that Satan is not tempting him to give up on Messiahship. He is rather tempting him to be a different sort of Messiah.
Temptation often comes in the guise of a seemingly sensible suggestion. Jesus is not being tempted to do anything bad in itself. Feeding the hungry is a good thing. But Jesus was not going to settle for doing a good thing: he wanted to do the best thing. He did care for the poor and urged us to do likewise. Yet he realised that our greatest need was for relationship with God. Merely turning stones into bread would not do the job.
Jesus, in the wilderness, took the road less travelled. It made all the difference to him and makes all the difference to us.
Blessings
David Reay