Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Morning, Zane.

I need to hurry. I’m expected to be back at my mill soon—where it is set up on another property. I also realize I failed yesterday to attach the photo and reading schedule that I said I would. Now I really need to hurry. Phooey! Now I see I didn’t even succeed at sending anything yesterday—even though I had prepared it and thought it was sent. Oh well… So here comes two days worth…for the price of one!

Bye. Love and prayers—Tua/Ray.

We are here given some important insight into the role and function of Satan under the sovereign rule of God. For reasons I cannot fully understand or explain, Satan clearly serves as a necessary antagonistic refining agent in the development of God’s human servants. Notice that it was not Satan who led Jesus into this desert encounter, but the very Spirit of God.

Three rounds of temptation are recorded in this account. They may indicate three basic areas of our own temptation and development.

1. FOOD. This can be representative of our full range of physical appetites that men are required to satisfy, but not to the neglect or exclusion of priority spiritual needs, for which God’s Word has been given.
2. FOOLISHNESS. It really is dumb use of human intelligence to defy known physical and spiritual laws and presume on God’s intervention and deliverance.
3. FAME & FORTUNE. Men, who refuse to comply with their priority purpose to worship and serve God, naturally worship and serve themselves, with a continual striving.

   To be sure, the same means Jesus used to defeat Satan and his schemes are the same means whereby you and I defeat him—the “living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23) and “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17).

   “So great is my veneration for the Bible, that the earlier my children begin to read it
   the more confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens
   John Quincy Adams