Daily Bible Reading 2nd May 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.
Part of the subtlety of this temptation, of course, lay in the fact that Satan quoted Scripture to substantiate his case. There is something very telling here. It can be very dangerous to base either specific doctrines or specific courses of action on single verses of Scripture. For one thing, this is the danger of taking for divine guidance an isolated verse that 'comes' to one. It can hardly be doubted that God does in fact guide in this way, but we should realise that it can be dangerous in isolation from the rest of Scripture. Satan's point here was unexceptionable, but it happened to be false and wrong. Jesus' word in 12 is a summons to compare Scripture with Scripture. We must beware of looking for propitious verses to justify a course we may already have secretly decided in our hearts, and of exalting a single Scripture into an elevation never meant for it.
That is one lesson to be learned here. Another has to do with the implication in the devil's words, 'If thou be the Son of God...'. It is as if he had said, 'Get God to prove you are His Son by putting Him to the test'. There is great plausibility in this, but what does it imply? To ask for proof, to demand a sign from God, a token, is evidence that we cannot trust His simple word. He has said, 'Thou art My beloved Son', but we do not really believe Him, so we must have a spectacular, unmistakable proof that He means what He says. But 'faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen', and when faith is real, it renders the demand for proofs and tokens unnecessary. This is the force of what Jesus said in reply, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'.