Reflective Bible Study

One of the events in Jesus’ life that I find incredibly interesting is found in this episode’s passage. Unlike many other passages in the gospels, it would seem that the passages that cover Jesus being tempted in the wilderness have many more layers of depth and insights than other parts of Jesus’ life. This seems to also confirm the idea that you can tell more about someone’s focus and character when they face adversity than when they are successful.

This event immediately follows Jesus’ baptism, and it can be found in both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke. For our episode today, we will be reading Matthew’s version, which is found in Matthew, chapter 4, and we will read from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 1, Matthew tells us:

¹ Then the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the Devil. ² After spending forty days and nights without food, Jesus was hungry. ³ Then the Devil came to him and said, “If you are God’s Son, order these stones to turn into bread.”

⁴ But Jesus answered, “The scripture says, ‘Human beings cannot live on bread alone, but need every word that God speaks.’”

⁵ Then the Devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, the Holy City, set him on the highest point of the Temple, ⁶ and said to him, “If you are God’s Son, throw yourself down, for the scripture says,

‘God will give orders to his angels about you;
    they will hold you up with their hands,
    so that not even your feet will be hurt on the stones.’”

⁷ Jesus answered, “But the scripture also says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

⁸ Then the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their greatness. ⁹ “All this I will give you,” the Devil said, “if you kneel down and worship me.”

¹⁰ Then Jesus answered, “Go away, Satan! The scripture says, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him!’”

¹¹ Then the Devil left Jesus; and angels came and helped him.

Almost every time I read this passage, something new stands out to me. While on the surface, these temptations seem simple to read and understand, the temptations Satan brings Jesus are incredibly nuanced and multi-layered.

With that said, let’s dive into some of the less obvious themes and details within these temptations and see what we will discover, while also uncovering a big theme we all can learn from how Jesus successfully resisted Satan’s temptations.

The first thing I notice is that these temptations cover three different themes or areas of our lives.

The first temptation, which is turning stones into bread, is to satisfy a physical need. Satan is tempting and challenging Jesus on whether He will use His power to help His “physical self”.

The second temptation, which is jumping from the temple, is to satisfy a social or relational need. By placing Himself in a situation where He should have died, not only is Jesus putting God’s protection on the spot, He is also making the bold statement for people to place their focus on Him. When the Jewish leaders see this, they would take note and they may have even drawn the same conclusion that Satan had quoted from Psalms.

The third temptation, which is worshiping Satan, is to shortcut Jesus’ spiritual mission, which is to give the glory to God. Everything Jesus did, from healing, teaching, and assembling a group of disciples all the way to the big mission of the cross was to give God the Father glory. Satan offers Jesus a shortcut to this mission, which Jesus declined.

In these three temptations, we have the three main areas of life present.

The next thing I notice about these three temptations is that they all hinge on the word “if”. The first two hinge on the challenge of whether Jesus is God’s Son, and the third hinges on the idea of worship – and whether it is important or not.

For many of us, worshiping the wrong thing, then repenting and asking for forgiveness is commonplace. However, for Jesus, if He was to be the perfect sacrifice, and a true substitute for our sins, then He must not have any sins of His own. That would mean living a life that there is nothing to repent of and nothing to ask forgiveness for. While we are already sin-stained, Jesus needed to live a life that kept Him from becoming sin-stained in the first place, in order to effectively take our stains onto Himself.

Another thing I notice in these three temptations relates to how Jesus responds to each of the temptations. Not only does Jesus push back at the devil’s challenge, He also quotes a piece of scripture that supports His position. It might be easy for us to think prayer is the answer for temptation, but if we look at Jesus’ temptations, prayer was not the weapon He used. Instead, Jesus used the Old Testament scriptures, and while we also have the New Testament to lean on, if the Old Testament was good enough for Jesus to use when facing temptation, then it should easily be good enough for you and I to use when facing temptations in our own lives.

In all the temptations Jesus faced, the root temptation was to use His own power and position to benefit Himself, and in every case, Jesus resisted the devil. Jesus did not come to strengthen His position in the universe; He came to show us what God the Father is like, and to give His life as a substitute for ours.

Before wrapping this episode up, I also want to point out one more interesting idea within this event. After Satan had tempted Jesus the third time, Jesus tells Satan to go away. The simple detail that Satan obeyed Jesus’ command is evidence that Jesus is stronger than Satan, and that Jesus would ultimately win the cosmic battle against sin.

While I’m sure that we could discover even more themes and layers in this event, this seems like a great place to conclude.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life and if you are facing temptation today, choose to fight back with a passage or promise from the Bible. If you are unsure of what verses to use, be sure pray and ask God for help with finding verses and promises to use.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself. When looking for promises and what God has done, take notes of good verses to combat challenges you are currently facing in life. Also, take note of verses that could be good verses for others to use as well. You never know when a verse you saw might be able to benefit someone else, and I am positive God will lead you to the verses He wants you to use, learn, and grow from when faced with challenges and temptations within your life.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As I read Jesus’ birth story from the gospel of Matthew, I am continually amazed at just how foreshadowed this event was. There was so much foreshadowed about it, that it is really surprising to me how the priests and religious leaders missed it.

First off, to set our passage up, there was a cosmic event of some kind. Some say that there was a specific shift in the constellations that the wise men saw that prompted them to begin their journey, while others say that angels shone in the night sky like stars, and it caught the wise men’s attention.

Either way, it is likely that the star and/or angels would have been visible to everyone who was paying attention, though it would seem as though the only ones paying attention were far away from the event. This is the first sign that should have been seen by the religious leaders – especially as this was just a few months after John the Baptist’s miraculous birth that we looked at in the previous episode.

When we then turn our eyes onto the passage for this episode, we see four places where Matthew directly states that an event happened to fulfill prophecy. While I might normally read the full passage, pausing periodically to insert comments, for this episode, we’ll just focus on the four specific places Matthew tells us prophecy was fulfilled.

The first prophecy in our passage to be fulfilled is found in Matthew, chapter 2, verses 5 and 6. Reading from the Contemporary English Version, Matthew tells us:

“They [the religious leaders] told him [Herod], ‘He will be born in Bethlehem, just as the prophet wrote,

 “Bethlehem in the land
    of Judea,
you are very important
    among the towns of Judea.
From your town
    will come a leader,
who will be like a shepherd
    for my people Israel.”’”

The Jewish leaders knew exactly where the Messiah would be born. It’s difficult to say if they were reluctant to share this knowledge with Herod, or if they freely shared the details when asked. Either way, they should have taken note of Herod’s question and perhaps paid a little closer attention to what was happening around them.

The next prophecy to be fulfilled is just a few verses later in verse 15, where we read, “So the Lord’s promise came true, just as the prophet had said, ‘I called my son out of Egypt.’”

It is interesting that Joseph, Mary, and their family would flee to Egypt. This event happening makes the beginning of Jesus’ life a prophetic representation of the children of Israel, who began in the promised land, before moving to Egypt during the great famine we read about in the last chapters of Genesis.

God then called the Israelites out of Egypt, and this prophecy echoes this event by saying that God will also call His Son out of Egypt as well. I’m not sure if any other aspects of Jesus’ life were representative of the nation of Israel, but there is a very clear prophetic parallel within this event at the beginning of Jesus’ life on earth.

The third prophecy that is fulfilled in Jesus’ birth event happens back in Judea. Matthew draws our attention to it when he quotes it in verses 17 and 18 by saying:

“So the Lord’s promise came true, just as the prophet Jeremiah had said,

‘In Ramah a voice was heard
    crying and weeping loudly.
Rachel was mourning
    for her children,
and she refused
to be comforted,
    because they were dead.’”

The Jewish leaders may have given up looking for the promised Messiah after Herod went and slaughtered all the baby boys that were 2 years or younger there. Perhaps Jesus was only months old when this happened, but Herod was the sort of person to be extra thorough in his methods. 

However, if the religious leaders stopped looking for the Messiah because of Herod’s mass killing here, then it shows how little faith they had in God – specifically in God’s ability to protect the Messiah that He promised to send. This event may have shifted the focus of some of the Jewish leaders at the time.

The last prophecy that Matthew points out to be fulfilled in our passage for this episode comes right at the end, at the close of verse 23, where it says, “So the Lord’s promise came true, just as the prophet had said, ‘He will be called a Nazarene.’”

When the leaders push back at a Messiah coming from Nazareth, I wonder where this prophecy was in their minds. Matthew draws our attention to the significance of where Joseph and Mary return to when they move back to the area, but it would seem as though there was a prophecy in place that the leaders either were not aware of, or one they discounted or dismissed. In a quick search of the Old Testament, I see no mention of the word Nazareth or Nazarene anywhere in it, so this makes me wonder what prophet Matthew is referring to.

Perhaps this was a prophecy that John the Baptist shared that is not included in the Bible, or maybe it is something included in one of the other ancient writings that was not included in the Bible. What we do know is that while Matthew draws our attention to this prophecy fulfilled, it is likely that the validity of the prophet or prophecy itself was debated at the time of Jesus.

All this comes together to point us to a significant truth that we might easily miss:

Knowledge is a poor substitute for attention, and if we are not paying attention, no amount of knowledge will keep us from drifting away from God.

Both nature and history pointed the Jewish leaders to pay attention to Jesus’ birth, but if they were not interested or looking for the Messiah to arrive, then there was no way for them to see it coming. Herod, who is known for being a little paranoid about people challenging his rule, clearly saw the sign of the wise men, and in this regard, he was more observant than the religious leaders.

Like Matthew did when writing his gospel, it is much easier to see how God has moved when looking back on the events that happened. Seeing the outcomes make it easier to see how God has moved and directed. This truth then leads us to a challenge when living our lives over 2,000 years later: Will we take our past and the evidence God has moved within it and use it as evidence to trust Him with the challenges we face in the present?

Today will become the past tomorrow, and while we might not clearly see God working in today’s challenges, that doesn’t mean He is absent. It may simply mean that we are looking from the wrong perspective.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open these challenges by saying, intentionally seek God first in your life and push yourself to look for God moving in your present circumstances. If you doubt God, look for evidence of His love, protection, and guidance from your past and use that to stand on to face your present challenges.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do in one way or another, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself, so you will better be able to recognize God in the present. While other people have ideas about God, look to the Bible to discover what God is really like, so you can recognize Him more clearly when He is moving in the present.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As I read the opening of Jesus’ story from the gospel of Luke, I am amazed at a number of things he includes. In this episode’s passage specifically, several key parts stood out as I read it in preparation for this episode.

This passage is one of the few that come before Jesus was alive, and it focuses in on Jesus’ relatives and the birth of John the Baptizer. As the passage opens, John has just turned eight days old, and he is taken to be circumcised and named. Let’s read what happened. Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 1, and we will read from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 59, Luke tells us that:

⁵⁹ On the eighth day, they came to have the child circumcised. They were going to name him Zechariah, like his father. ⁶⁰ But his mother spoke up. “No!” she said. “He must be called John.”

⁶¹ They said to her, “No one among your relatives has that name.”

⁶² Then they motioned to his father. They wanted to find out what he would like to name the child. ⁶³ He asked for something to write on. Then he wrote, “His name is John.” Everyone was amazed. ⁶⁴ Right away Zechariah could speak again. Right away he praised God. ⁶⁵ All his neighbors were filled with fear and wonder. Throughout Judea’s hill country, people were talking about all these things. ⁶⁶ Everyone who heard this wondered about it. And because the Lord was with John, they asked, “What is this child going to be?”

Prior to this passage, some pretty miraculous things had already happened. When the angel came to Zechariah, he took the elderly priest’s voice away because Zechariah did not have faith in God’s promise.

This begins a string of extra-ordinary events that lead up to John’s birth. For somewhere between 9 and 12 months, depending on how quickly Elizabeth became pregnant, we have a mute priest, and this in itself draws attention to John the Baptizer and who he would become.

The first thing that really jumps out at me is how the relatives were pushing to name the child Zechariah, after his father. This speaks to how the relatives felt about Zechariah, and specifically that they wanted to honor him. By proposing the name Zechariah, it is like these relatives wanted to remember the father when looking at the son.

However, what happens next is also interesting. Zechariah’s wife Elizabeth spoke up and she told the relatives the name that Zechariah had shared with her. Not only is this an example of a woman speaking up for God’s plan in the Bible, it is also an example of good communication between spouses in the Bible as well – especially in a situation where communication would be a little more challenging.

Zechariah would have had to have written out what happened, and write out that the angel wanted the child’s name to be John. It may have been a very challenging time in their marriage, but coming out on the other side, after John’s birth shows us that Zechariah and his wife were united. In this event, they are among the first to have a firsthand look at God stepping back into the forefront of “His-Story”. We tend to think of wise men or shepherds being the first to know, but aside from Mary and Joseph, Zechariah and Elizabeth knew that Mary’s baby would be special even earlier.

To bring even more confirmation to John’s extra-ordinary entrance into the world, immediately after he was named by his father in writing, note the legal tone in this event, his voice was immediately restored, and the first thing he did was praise God. Zechariah lost his voice questioning God, and he praises God when his voice is restored. All this drew attention onto John the Baptizer, and what his life would become.

And this leads us to a statement in this passage that inspires me.

In the middle of verse 66, we read the phrase, “The Lord was with John”. This phrase inspires and challenges me because it prompts me to ask myself, “What would I do if I knew that God was with me?”

If I knew 100% that God was with me, would that change any of my actions or my current direction?

Because of the events that surround this phrase about God being with John, I wonder if the silence and muteness of Zechariah could be compared with how God is often times by our side.

It is not as if Zechariah could not communicate. He could — it was just through nontraditional means. Zechariah likely had to write everything out that He wanted to share with others.

In a similar way, rarely does God verbally communicate with us. Instead, there are things that He inspires people to write down, and events where we can look and see His leading and direction in. God seems to communicate more through us looking at the evidence than He does directly, verbally, and/or visually.

Everyone in Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story were forced to look at the evidence. While Zechariah received the angel’s visit and message, everyone else was forced to simply view the evidence of his muteness and let it give weight and authenticity to his story. The evidence drew attention to the event, and it makes me wonder if Zechariah had not questioned, and not been struck mute, if people would have paid more or less attention to this extra-ordinary birth.

All this is to help us understand that sometimes God chooses to communicate silently, through the evidence that we can see if we pay attention, instead of visibly and audibly stepping into view. Perhaps He knows that most people are not ready to see Him, and that is why He is more “subtle” in His methods.

As we come to the end of this podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and keep your eyes open to looking for evidence of God’s communication. He wants us to find Him, and that will only happen if we are actively looking.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn more of what God is like and how He has revealed Himself in the past.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or get distracted away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we begin our second chronological year moving through the gospels, I thought it may be good to tackle something interesting that I found in what many people might call the “most boring part of the four gospels”. This part is not boring because it is confusing. Instead, many people think it is boring because they simply don’t see it as being all that relevant to us today.

The supposedly boring passages we will tackle as this year beings have to do with the two places in the gospels where Jesus’ genealogy is listed. Matthew opens his gospel by sharing how Jesus’ family tree traces its roots all the way back to Abraham, while Luke waits until after Jesus’ birth story to share how Jesus’ family tree traces its roots back to God. Since there are differences in each of the two genealogies, scholars have debated and discussed why this might be. The most likely consensus is that Matthew abbreviated his genealogy to get three sets of 14 names, while Luke shares every single detail and name. Another possibility is that one of the gospels covers Joseph’s family tree, while the other links to Mary, Jesus’ mother, but this is harder to see on the surface.

I might agree that this part of the gospels is the most boring if it were not for one little detail that Luke includes at the end of his gospel’s genealogy. The New American Standard Bible translations tells us that Luke ends his genealogy in chapter 3, verse 38 by saying, “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

This is just a snippet of how Luke shares his genealogy, and while it might be boring to some, what I find fascinating is that Luke does not end by simply saying that Jesus was “Adam’s Son”. Instead, he takes it a step further by pointing out that Adam, the first human, was God’s Son. Regardless of whether you feel the creation story in Genesis is literal or figurative, Luke shares that the first human, Adam, can be known as God’s Son.

There are two angles on this idea that I find interesting.

Firstly, since Jesus came into the world supernaturally and God the Father was Jesus’ true Father, while Joseph took more of an adoptive parent type role, it could be said that Jesus was simply God’s Son in a first generation, direct-descendant sort of way. However, while this is what most Christians believe, Luke extends this idea even further by pointing out that Adam, the first human, was also God’s Son. In this way, Jesus and Adam are like brothers, who have the same Father. This is also why sometimes people will call Jesus the “Second Adam”. This echoes what Luke describes in how he opens his genealogy. He begins in verse 23 by saying, “When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli,” and then it continues on from there sharing names all the way back to Adam, the son of God. Even if you doubt the virgin birth as evidence to Jesus being God’s Son, Luke challenges you to still look at Jesus’ life as though He was God’s Son through a genealogy that takes you back to creation, where God created Adam.

This leads us to another angle on this passage and idea that I find fascinating: If Adam was God’s son, than that makes all of us as descendants of Adam, also descendants of God – the first Father. This is why in some other places in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as our Brother, and we are all His brothers and sisters. This can only be the case if God is our Father, since Mary is not our universal mother.

However, have you ever really thought of yourself as God’s son or daughter? Christianity uses the phrase “child of God” to describe each of us, but this is too often minimized into being a close-to-meaningless cliché. Instead, what if we grabbed a hold of the idea that we are God’s son or daughter?

If we looked to God as being our True Parent, would that change how we live and/or act?

If we believed that our actions reflect on God like they do onto our parents, would that change how we live each day?

When we look at a young child and how they act and behave, we can definitely understand that some of what we are seeing is the child making a choice. However, we also get to see the results of how the parent has raised the child. We instinctively understand that both nature and nurture go into how a child develops. If we see ourselves as being sons and daughters of God and that He is our Father, then would we think differently?

Like our human parents helped direct the nurture side of our lives, perhaps God could be thought of as directing the nature side of our development. We probably should be cautious as we follow this train of thought because just as our human parents cannot control all of our nurturing as we develop, God probably limits what He ultimately chooses to control on the nature side of our development as well. Both God and our human parents can make choices that relate to our development, but as we grow, we become more independent and make choices on our own. The choices we make can have a positive impact on both our nature, which would be one way to say our biology or our body, and our nurture, which we could describe as our environment.

There is definitely crossover between God the Parent impacting our nature, and our human parents impacting our nurture. Our parents can help or hurt us based upon what they do while we are growing in the womb, and what they feed us when we are young. This is one way that our parents impact our nature, biology side. On the other hand, God chose what parents to bring your way, and he often directs and protects in broader ways than even our human parents can, which definitely impacts the environment, nurture side of our development.

As a parent, I would do well to see myself as a partner with God in my child’s developing, or growing up, years. If both my wife and I see ourselves as being partners with God, then this is the best way to help our children grow into being the adults God created each of them to be.

But this can really only happen if we choose to see ourselves as being parented by God, and as being children of God. This pushes us look at ourselves differently, and it helps us see God more personally than being simply a distant supernatural deity.

As we come to the close of our first podcast episode this year, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life. Intentionally learn to see God the Father as your personal Father, who worked alongside your human parents helping you to become the person you were created to be.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do in one way or another, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself, and keep your mind open to finding ways God the Father reveals Himself as a parent in the passages you read.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!