THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS Luke 4:1-12 Lars ... - Vital Christianity

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But Satan taunted Jesus by asking how He could believe that He was so special, precious,
loved, if He was left in the desert with no provision for creature comforts and no food to keep the
body and soul together.
Israel, God's firstborn son, was miraculously kept alive in another wilderness as God sent
manna from heaven on a daily basis. In fact miracles followed them all through their wilderness
ordeal. But for You, Satan insinuated, there is no special provision.
Why not take the matter into Your own hands? Work Your own miracles and then
announce to the people, struggling on the borderline of poverty and economic hardship, that the
new age of God's abundance and generosity has arrived? Feed Yourself and the crowds and win
their immediate allegiance. Meet their physical needs and You will have the world at Your feet
overnight. They will hail You as the great Architect of a utopia of peace and plenty for all.
Jesus saw the danger. It was a bribe to get a following. It a shortcut, an appeal to
shortcircuit God's timing and thus God's plan. It offered an easy road to popularity knowing
that whatever panders to the human appetite—physical, emotional, aesthetic, volitional—is
bound to be applauded.
But for Jesus this was not the way ahead. People need bread. He acknowledged that fact
in His feeding the crowd; but there is no guarantee that any person wants to hear the divine word.
And so, when they came—at the conclusion of the feeding miracle—to abduct Jesus and forcibly
to crown Him King, He fled from their enthusiasm (Jn 6:15). He would not be their King in
that way. Shortly thereafter Jesus challenged them to follow Him as the Suffering Servant, the
one who would give Himself as a sacrificial Lamb, but they refused "never to follow Him again"
(v. 66).
Jesus answered instead with Scripture which states that man shall not live on bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Dt 8:3).
Man was not made to live on bread alone. While animals can live by bread alone, human
beings—made in the image and likeness of God—can exist on bread alone, but they cannot live
on such bread. Rather man is to live by God's Word. That is, he shall live by truth, justice,
righteousness, and grace. He shall live by kindness, mercy and love. He shall live by taking up a
cross daily, denying himself and doing good to everyone, even to those who hate him. That is
LIFE as God meant it to be.
Definition
The essence of temptation is to take a thing for which there is a proper use and put it
to improper use. Put another way, it is doing the right thing in a wrong way.