Lakeside Church

Luke 4:1-13

These questions are connected to the message “Chatting with the Devil” from Sunday, June 6, 2021. You can find it here.
Dive In:
Read or listen to this passage (Luke 4:1-13) in an unfamiliar translation of the Bible (e.g. New Living Translation or The Message). What did this passage teach you about who God is and what God is like?
Reflect:
  1. What piqued your curiosity, challenged you, encouraged you, motivated you from the sermon?
  2. Luke tells us that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. This is how he will carry out his entire ministry. As followers of Jesus we too have the Holy Spirit within us. How does this make you feel? How does this challenge you? Encourage you? 
  3. Jesus spends an excruciating 40 days in the desert with no food, no water, no fellowship. He is alone with himself, with God, and with the Tempter (devil). Yet in verse 14 Luke tells us that Jesus emerges from this experience “in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Has there been a time in your life when you have been in a ‘desert’ or dark place and God met you in a powerful way — you encountered God and grew in your faith? 
  4. Marc said that “something doesn’t need to be true to be destructive; it only needs to be believed.” Give examples in your life when you believed something about yourself, God, or others, that was destructive even though it turned out not to be trueHow have you seen this played out either in your own life or in someone else’s? 
  5. What is “the bread” (something good) that satan uses in your life to tempt you off the path of faithfulness to Jesus?
Geek Out:

Consider: in last week’s questions we noted that in Luke’s ancestry of Jesus (chapter 2), he goes all the way back to Adam, a reminder that Jesus came for all humanity not just the Jewish people. It’s also a reminder of the reason that Jesus had to come at all — to correct the ‘sin of Adam’ — it’s an undoing of ‘the Fall.’ The temptation in the wilderness is also a correction to Israel’s failure in the wilderness (for 40 years). In other words, the life of Jesus is the undoing of the old story and the redoing of a new one!

Act on it:

Are you convinced of your identity in Christ? That you are precious to, and loved by, God. God actually calls us “Beloved!” Meditate this week on that thought. If you need a little help with this, here are some verses that might help.

1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God …
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.