THURSDAY October 17th
Luke 4:9-13
‘And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.’
We come to the third of the temptations that have been recorded by Luke in his gospel, and this time it is to do with tempting Jesus to test God, by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple to see if God would send angels to save him. Notice how the devil knew Old Testament scripture, but he didn’t compare scripture with scripture, for yes, God could have sent his angels to save Jesus, but in the first place there was another important scripture which Jesus used in response, which was ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’. The devil was quoting from Psalm 91:11 and Jesus from Deuteronomy 6:16.
The devil will always try to twist or misrepresent what God has said and what is written in the word of God It is exactly what he did with Eve when he asked her in the garden of Eden what it was that God had instructed them regarding the tree in the midst of the garden. And he will always try his best to misrepresent the word of God to us, he will try to distort the truth, or to dress something up to make it seem okay with the hope that we will take the bait and fall for it. As we saw a couple of days ago, we need to be careful, keeping our eye out for the traps that he will try to set up to catch us.
I am having a spot of bother with a mole in my garden at present, he seems to be able to avoid everything I do to try to trap him, he seems to be in a particular spot one moment, and then I discover that he is somewhere else, he is managing to evade me. We need to be like the mole and ensure that we evade the traps that the devil keeps putting up to catch us out, and following the example of Jesus we need to learn the word of God so that when Satan does tempt us, lure us and try to bring us down, we can quote the word of God, for there is an authority in the word that he will not be able to withstand.
And on another note, let us make sure that we don’t misquote or misrepresent scripture, but be faithful to a correct interpretation, ensuring we are comparing one scripture with another, to get the right balance and sound doctrine.