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Wednesday 21 August 2013

Luke 3:21-4:13 - Baptism and Testing

Luke gives far less information on the baptism of Jesus than Matthew did. He simply records that Jesus was baptised too without any comment on the reluctance that John had in baptising Jesus. The key point for Luke is that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, and a voice came from heaven declaring that Jesus was the Son of God and God was pleased with Him.
Jesus was about thirty years old at this point. Luke then gives a genealogy of Jesus, working backwards from Joseph. There are a number of key figures in this genealogy, including David, Isaac, Noah and Adam. 
Immediately following this Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There He was tempted for forty days.
Jesus ate nothing, and so was hungry at the end of the forty days. Then the devil came to temp Him. First the devil tries to get Him to prove He is the Son of God by turning stone into bread, playing on the fact that Jesus was hungry. Jesus replies using Scripture (Deut 8:3), saying that man cannot live by bread alone. The verse in Deuteronomy goes on to say that man cannot live by bread alone. 
The the devil took Him up to a high place and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and promised to give Him all the splendour and authority of the world if Jesus would only worship Satan. Of course, Satan did not actually have the right to give this. Jesus answers by quoting the command to worship only God.  If we keep this maxim it will keep us safe from an awful lot of trouble.
Seeing Jesus' commitment to the Lord, Satan seeks to play on this by getting Him to throw Himself down and let God rescue Him. Jesus is having none of it, stating that we should not put God to the test.
Then the devil left Him.

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