Luke 4:12

‘And Jesus answering said to him, “It is said, You shall not put to the test the Lord your God.” '

Jesus reply was unequivocal. ‘You shall not put to the test the Lord your God' (compare Deuteronomy 6:16). It is true that God promises His protection to His people, but only as they face the vicissitudes of life, not in order to test out God. It is when they make the Lord their refuge (Psalms 91:9) not when they take advantage of his goodness. To do what was asked would not be an example of great faith but of great presumption. By this, as in the other two replies He has made, He reveals that He considers that attitude towards God is paramount. What comes first is pleasing God and walking before Him. He will perform signs when they are revealing the compassion of God, or when the power of the Devil must be overthrown, or in order to manifest Himself to men of faith so as to increase their faith, for all these are turning men's thoughts towards God. But He will not do it in order to win men over to Himself alone. Men won over in that way are not won over to God at all.

We can summarise these three prominent temptations as:

· Not being willing to accept from God only what comes to Him in the will of God, but rather using His powers to go outside it.

· Taking the opportunity to use a quick and easy way to power by force, thus ignoring God's essential purposes of establishing righteousness and ruling not just the people, but the hearts of the people.

· Taking advantage of a suggestion that He use the spectacular in order to win men's minds by taking wrong advantage of God's promises.

All these, and all temptations related to them, He had discarded. He now knew from the Scriptures what was the way ahead (Luke 4:18).

The temptations did not end here. Often when He saw the poverty of the people and the struggle for food He must have been tempted to solve their problems, and there was a constant danger that the people would seek to stir Him to physical attempts to seek power. But He knew that neither the one nor the other would solve the problems of the world. Today in some parts of the world men have sufficiency, and over sufficiency of food. Are they thereby better people? History has demonstrated that when men grow fat they grow sinful. And today we have nations with comparatively righteous laws. But are their citizens without sin?

But in some ways the last temptation was the one He experienced most in the future. He would constantly have to decide when He should use His powers, and when He should refrain from doing so. He was challenged to produce signs by the Pharisees (Matthew 16:1) and even to descend from His cross (Matthew 23:35) at which they would believe in Him (Matthew 27:40). So often in His life it would have been easier to give way and do something spectacular. But He knew that it would not achieve God's real purpose. Was not what He did do spectacular enough? It was sufficient for those whose hearts were open to believe.