Daily Bible Reading 25th April 2026 // Luke 4:1-13
1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were over, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you’,
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Another lesson to be drawn from this first temptation is that it came along the line of Messianic power. Jesus had received power at His baptism, and now He was tempted to use it wrongly, to act in His own right independently of God. It is sometimes said that Satan tempted Jesus to do a right thing in a wrong way, and at a wrong time; and this is doubtless true, but it is even deeper than that. It was pointed out earlier that in the divine pronouncement at the Baptism there were combined two ideas - that of God's anointed King and that of the Suffering Servant - and that Christ was to combine both these figures in Himself. And Satan was precisely trying to drive a wedge between the two, by suggesting a Messiahship without suffering. 'You are hungry. Use your power, to turn stones into bread. Why should you suffer, and die of starvation. What use will you be to God if you die? It is your duty to save yourself'. This is a temptation that came back to Jesus again and again. He faced it at Caesarea Philippi, when He began to teach that the Son of man must suffer, and Peter began to rebuke him, saying, 'Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee', earning the devastating rejoinder, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'. He faced it again at the Cross, when passers-by, the unwitting mouthpiece of Satan, said to Him, 'If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross'. This is exactly what Satan was saying to Jesus in the first temptation in the wilderness.