The Temptation of Jesus - Luke 4:1-13

Philip Yancey has written very well on this in his book.

In the past I wasn't able to grasp the importance of these tests - what's the big deal if Jesus really turned the stones into bread or jumped from top of the temple? (Well, I was not that ignorant as to miss the 'big deal' if Jesus did worship the devil for the world!) Yancey made it clear that it's not about the action itself, but behind these tests are the temptation from the devil to offer an easy way out for Jesus' mission. By offering free food, or more broadly meeting people's physical needs, Jesus could have easily attracted lots of followers and changed the world. By jumping off the rooftop unhurt, or more broadly doing lots of miracles, Jesus could also have gathered lots of followers. Worshiping the devil was the most straight forward - the devil, the 'prince of this world', didn't mind handing the world over to Jesus, if He would just do his bidding. So mission accomplished, isn't it?

Reading this passage again, it just highlighted to me again how important we uphold our hearts in front of God. Worshiping the devil was clearly against God's command, so I won't discuss it here. But the other two, basically they were not the wrong things to do. And later on in Jesus' life, He has also done something similar (e.g. feeding the 5000 and the 4000, and escaping from the crowd from the edge of a cliff). What's important is the WHY it was done - is it for God? Or for our own purpose? We need to be so clear about ourselves, our thoughts, our intention. And this is what God asks us to do, to be clear of what's going on in our hearts and minds at all time.

I would consider myself a 'thinking person' but yet, I really can't be so honest with myself and so clear in my heart to put God first all the time. Yet as Jesus said, we need to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. That's what God demands of us, which we can never achieve. Luckily we have God's grace to cover for what we can't do on our own.

Another interesting thing is that I don't think it was that tough for Jesus to resist the above temptations and shortcuts from the devil, at that point in time. Not that it's easy! Just that it's a much tougher call later in Gethsemane, when Jesus came face to face with death and the cross. It reminded me my own experience when I opted out from the trainee scheme from my company, understanding that was a call from my Lord. It was easy when I was asked to make that decision because I knew it was the right thing to do. It was tough at the point when I needed to make the final call, with the consequences e.g. salary cut etc. looked at me in my eyes. That's when the conflict really came and needed the strength from above to make the right choice.