Saturday 17th January
Read Matthew 4:8-11
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. 9 ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’
10 Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”’
11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.” (NIVUK)
The temptation to take the short-cut is very common today. The rise of AI tools encourages people to outsource their thinking in the name of efficiency and expediency. Many advances in our lifetime, and those before us, arose because people sought a way to do things quickly and with less effort.
The offer before Jesus is precisely of this nature. Recall that the offer is what is His due as the declared Son of God…
“I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:
He said to me, ‘You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.” (Psalm 2:7-8) (NIVUK)
But the way in which the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of the Lord is not by gift from the slanderer. There is a path that must be trod, a mission completed, a painful, wilderness-like, experience. The short-cut was an easy but dangerous path.
How can we tell if a short-cut is wise?
