Daily Bible Reading 27th 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.
We come now to the second temptation. It will be noticed that Luke's order is different from Matthew's, and it has been suggested that while Matthew's is probably the historical order, Luke places the temptation to presume on the word of God last, as being 'the religious temptation through the word of God, and therefore morally the hardest of all to one who values that Word'. This may be the truth of the matter, although, as Plummer says, 'the reasons for preferring one order to the other are subjective and unconvincing'.
What has already been said by way of introduction to the temptations in general is just as true with this one as with the first. And we may truly say that Satan's overall, specific aim was to draw Jesus away from His Messianic calling to be a suffering Saviour. It was, of course, in Satan's interests to seek to get Christ to bypass the cross, for the cross was destined by God to be the devil's destruction. Small wonder that he whispered so urgently to our Lord, 'Not that way'. It is in this light that we must examine it, and it is in this light that it is best understood, though doubtless it also bears more general lessons, such as that it reminds us of our Lord's own words later in His ministry, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'