I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 4-5.

    Luke’s account of the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness demonstrate the temptations faced by those who seek to change the world. The first temptation is to bribe people to do as you say by providing for their physical needs. The second temptation is to acquire political power and force people to do as you say. The third temptation is to overawe people and get them to do as you say without thinking. I am not sure I have summed up the temptations correctly, but I am convinced that they represent the different wrong ways which people use when they try to fix what is wrong with the world. Jesus knew that the only way to fix the world was to convince people to do the right thing and that each person had to figure out what the right thing was for themselves. There is no one-size-fits-most set of rules which can be imposed on everyone in order to fix the world. People need to desire to do the right thing.

    I have never quite understood the dynamics of what took place when Jesus preached in the synagogue in Nazareth. As best I can figure it out, the people were initially skeptical of Jesus because He was “one of them”, what made Him an authority to teach them? Jesus responded to this by pointing out that being Jewish did not give them an exclusive claim on God. Sometimes God chooses to perform His miracles for those outside of the “chosen” rather than among them. Sometimes God’s word is more positively received by the “sinners” than by the “saved”.