Luke 4:1-14

Luke 4:1-14

We had a pretty awesome discussion. So awesome in fact, that we will continue on this passage for next week. I don' t think we really concluded anything, but we've got some interesting thought processes going which I will describe here.

When we last met our hero, Jesus was being baptized by John and having a geneology recorded. Then, even though it was the devil who would tempt/test him, it was [the] Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness (I wrote [the] because apparently there's no article in the Greek). We noticed that Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, possibly correlated to the 40 years of wandering for the Israelites after leaving Egypt before they came to the promised land. Apparently, Moses also fasted for 40 days and nights before getting the commandments (Ex 34:28).

(Side note: when I was in Egypt this summer, we took a trip out to the Sinai Peninsula and while there is dispute over exactly which mountain Moses brought the commandments from, I was definitely walking on ground that had been previously wandered over by Israelites.)

As long as we're making references, each of Jesus' comebacks is a quote from Deuteronomy. 1) The 'man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God' quote comes from Deut 8:3 while Moses is addressing something relating to the Manna. 2) 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve' is in Deut 6:13 and 10:20. 3) 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God' comes from Deut 6:16 which is a reference to Exodus 17. Apparently, 'tempt' here refers to 'trying the Lord by testing his presence.' There was general bemusement over how Jesus tends to use scripture. Here, he's countering scripture with other scripture. Later, he'll quote scripture and interpret it further. How does Jesus use scripture?

We wondered about the implications of the devil starting everything with 'If you are the Son of God' and what it meant for the human/godness of Jesus to be faced with these things. And the devil also uses scripture so we started talking about what it means that the devil hasn't actually lied to Jesus at any point. If Jesus chooses any of his offers, it will be because Jesus is lying to himself that the thing that the devil is offering is more important (though we haven't gotten around to talking about what exactly is important).

It reminded me of the early stoics and their view that people have messed up lives because society convinces them that certain things are good which actually are not good. But society says they're good so people choose them anyway, mistakenly thinking that society is right. People's lives are straightened out when they realize what things in life are the real goods.

We had a lot of topics out on the floor, and I've probably forgotten some.
But the discussion will continue, so tune in next time when we ask:

Satan? WTF?