Thursday, May 7, 2026

“The Pattern of the Battle” (Luke 4:3-12)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/7/2026 7:21 PM

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  The Pattern of the Battle”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                                   Reference:  Luke 4:3-12

            Message of the verses:  3And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE.’”  5And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whom ever I wish. 7“Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” 8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’”   9And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; 10for it is written,
            ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU TO GUARD YOU,’11and,‘ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP,
            SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.’” 12And Jesus answered and said to him, “It is said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.’”

            This morning I had a lot of trouble trying to save my Spiritual Diary and ended up quoting a large sermon from John MacArthur to cover what I wanted to cover.  This evening’s SD will be very short as what we will be looking at this evening is an introduction to the verses quoted above, and then in tomorrow morning’s SD we will begin to break the verses down in order to look at them more closely.

            “The specific temptations with which Satan assaulted Jesus were unique to Him.  No believer today, for instance, could be tempted to turn rocks into bread, or to fly.  Nevertheless, the temptations the Lord faced are representative of the broader categories of temptation faced by all believers.  The satanic assault on the sinless Savior came in three waves.”  Now Lord willing I will begin to look at the first wave in tomorrow mornings SD.

            The following may come up later on but as I was listening to John MacArthur’s sermon on the first two temptations I learned something that I thought was true, but never knew how it was true, and that is the phrase “If You are the Son of God.”  Now think about how Satan became Satan, for he was a created being but then fell to temptation and became this evil being that he is now and taking one third of the angels down with him.  I don’t know which of the Three Persons of the godhead created the angels, but after they were created they all certainly knew who the second person of the godhead created them, so the way the phrase is using the word “If” should be translated “Since” for Satan knew Jesus was the Son of God.  As I listened to the sermon this afternoon on these verses MacArthur explained that it should be “Since” and not “If.”  It has something to do with the Greek constructive of the sentence.

5/7/2026 7:39 PM

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment