WEDNESDAY 3.1.23: Trying to derail the Messiah
Unlike Matthew (cf. Matthew 1:1-17), Luke took Jesus’ list of ancestors all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” That showed Jesus as the Savior for all people. All the temptations tried to get Jesus to make his life easier by matching popular hopes of what the Messiah would do. But Jesus refused the urge to prove his identity in self-serving way.
Our culture often toys with the medieval idea of an ugly, horned devil. Would a figure like that have actually appealed to Jesus? Are you tempted, not by a dark “devil” figure, but by an inner whisper urging you to ignore God’s way? How can embracing your identity as God’s child help you resist that whisper?
Reflection
• In Luke 4:10-11, the tempter quoted Psalm 91. Jesus didn’t say, “A Bible verse? Must be right.”
Scholar Scot McKnight said we cannot “read the Bible as a collection of . . . sanctified morsels of truth.” 1 How can you, like Jesus, learn the Bible’s core principles to guide your life? How can it be spiritually unsafe to follow isolated Bible verses, as the tempter urged Jesus to do?
Prayer: Loving God, remind me to hear and apply the Bible’s big principles to my life. Let me learn, not just fragments, but the Bible’s overall message to empower me to resist temptation. Amen.
1Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008, pp. 46.