Satan takes center stage

Recently I had the honor of preaching on the gospel text of Luke 4:1-13 which is Luke's version of Jesus' temptation. As I shared this text with several people throughout the week I would ask, as I commonly tend to do, "what do you hear in this text?"

Of the many times I asked the question I heard these various responses:

"How does the devil know scripture?"

"How does the devil know about angles if he was not a fallen angel himself?"

"The devil is very persistent."

"The devil temps us even with things that seem good."

Of all the responses I heard, the vast majority of them focused on the devil character. I could not help but wonder that in a story about Jesus, in a Gospel about Jesus showing humanity about God, why is the devil taking center stage when we read this story?

Perhaps, we are focusing on the wrong thing...