Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Psalms 111-113
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 4:12
Jesus: Yes, but the Hebrew Scriptures also say, “You will not presume on God; you will not test the Lord, the one True God.”
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Don’t you love it when someone argues scripture with you? I know I do. Yeah, right! But scripture says, this is okay. But scripture says I shouldn’t do that. But scripture says… And that’s exactly what Satan did to Jesus that day in the wildernes.
Hey, Jesus. You’re the Son of God. Scripture says, angels will watch after you so that you can jump off of this temple and they won’t let you get hurt. Give it a try and see if it works. Let’s see if you really are who you think you are. Maybe you’re just dreaming and your mom was just feeding you a line all these years to cover up that pregnancy story. Go ahead and jump. You’ll be okay. Angels will catch you.
And Jesus knows they would have. He knows His true Father. He’s talked to Him every day for years. He’s learned His words. He heard the story of His birth and saw the fulfillment of those obscure Messianic scriptures in His life from the time He was just a youngster. He knew who He was and also knew the path He would take to the cross at the bequest of His Father. He also knew Satan’s words were true that angels would come to His rescue and would not let Him be harmed before it was time for His execution.
There was a problem with Satan’s request, though. Satan wanted Jesus to violate a more important aspect of God’s word – obedience to His will. Jesus knew what would Him feel good for the moment. He knew would might fuel His human ego, but He also knew what would give His heavenly Father the most glory and that is what He wanted most. He wanted to satisfy His Father’s will more than His own. And that’s the point.
A verse or two taken out of the context of the whole Bible can let you do just about anything you want to do. There is justification in God’s word for all kinds of things. There are stories of violence, murder, vengeance, sex, adultery, theft, embezzlement. Pick a vice or crime or just about any sin you want to commit and it has been done and is recorded in God’s word. Just pick a few of the verses around that sin and you can figure out how to justify whatever you want to do. But that’s not God’s will.
So what is God’s will? What does the Book really tell us? It’s the story of God’s plan for our redemption. It’s His will that everyone would come to Him for the forgiveness of sin and follow His commands. It’s His will that all would recognize that He is the one and only true God and would worship Him as such. It’s His will that we would love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbors and we love ourselves. That’s the message of the Bible.
It’s pretty simple. Sometimes not so easy to do, but pretty simple to remember. Just love. That’s it. Jesus showed us how. He didn’t let Satan distract Him from that simple mission or the simple message His Father gave Him to deliver to the rest of the world. Satan tried his best, but it didn’t work. Why? Because Jesus understood the message of the Book. He wasn’t about to let Satan use one little piece of it to persuade Him to do something that contradicted the message of the whole Book.
That’s where we get messed up today. Someone shows us something in scripture that tickles our ears and shows us where we can get what we want, but it doesn’t fit with the rest of God’s word. The problem is we don’t read it enough to understand the whole message. We let those little snippets that we like overpower our emotions and our will and forget we are supposed to be doing God’s will.
So how do you figure out what the Bible is about so you don’t end up falling for one of Satan’s tricks? First, you need to give your whole self to God. Let Him be Lord of everything in your life. Let Him take control of all of it. Family, job, money, everything. Then, read His instruction book. He tells us how we are to live. We just don’t like what we read and don’t do what it says most of the time. Or we just don’t read it and don’t know what it says and go about our merry way.
Jesus knew scripture. His example shows us that if we expect to stand up to the schemes Satan will use against us in this world, we should know them, too. No matter what your age, there is no better time than today to start seriously reading and studying His word. You never know when you might need just the passage you read this morning.
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