Today’s passage is Luke 4:1-13. Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted for forty days. The devil has three temptations. The first is to prove he’s the Son of God by turning stones into bread to end his hunger. The second is to worship the devil so he could rule the earthly kingdoms. The third is to prove he’s the Son of God by jumping off the temple and letting angels support him. Jesus defeats the devil by trusting in God’s word.
Why does the devil not give up? Why does God allow the devil to test Jesus?
In resisting the third temptation, Jesus tells the devil he will not put the Lord to the test.
This is ironic since Jesus is the Lord and the devil is testing him.
The irony is probably lost on the devil since he never obeyed God anyway.
The devil isn’t the only one who tests the Lord in the Bible of course.
Gideon tested him and so did Jacob.
I, too, have tested the Lord, making little bargains.
“If this or that happens, Lord, then I’ll do this or that because I’ll know you’re with me.”
Testing God shows little or no faith in God.
But being tested by God is a necessary exercise to show me that I have faith.
I need to be tested for my sake, not God’s.
God already knows my faith. I’m the one who doesn’t.
Testing, temptation and training all bring out my faith by showing me my sins and failings.
The more sins I see in me, the stronger my faith because I see how pitifully inadequate I am to help myself to salvation.
The weaker I see myself, the greater God’s grace and glory in my salvation.
When I wanted to have more faith, I couldn’t find it.
Only as I’ve seen my sins more clearly and felt them more deeply have I found the faith I was looking for.
The way to faith was seeing sin as sin and not rationalizing it as mistakes, bad luck, or something normal that everyone does.
Once I saw that I was a sinner through and through but God loved me so much that he paid the price of my sins, then faith came.
My sin made me a desert onto myself#8212;dry, empty, and barren.
In my desert I wanted the power to transmute stone to bread, lead to gold.
I wanted to leap off tall buildings with the impunity of a superhero.
I wanted to rule the world. But until I saw I was a desert, I couldn’t change.
That happened when God allowed every idol I had#8212;job, money, people#8212;to crash and crumble.
The desert God let me wander into was the reflection of what I was inside. When I saw that truth, he led me out.
Jesus didn’t need a desert and he didn’t need temptations.
I needed Jesus to go into the desert and win against the devil so that when I went into my desert I could find Jesus already ahead of me and waiting with love.
Application: I bought my brother in law milk to drink instead of insisting he buy it himself.
Lord, bring your life of love into my desert of sin. Raise me up, give me life.
