Week 4: Part One, Chapter 3 — "Temptation: Showdown in the Desert"

1.Yancey argues that each of Satan's three temptations was a genuine and reasonable-sounding alternative strategy for Jesus's mission: use bread to win followers, use spectacle to prove his identity, use political power to establish his kingdom. In your own words, what was wrong — or insufficient — with each of these approaches?

2.Yancey points out that these were not temptations to do evil but temptations to do good things in the wrong way — to shortcut the suffering of the cross. Have you ever been tempted in this way: to do something genuinely good but by a means that bypasses the hard, slow, costly path God has set? Describe the pattern.

3.Jesus responds to each temptation with a quotation from Deuteronomy — from Israel's own story of wilderness testing. What does it tell us about Jesus that he faced temptation through the weapon of Scripture? What does it tell us about how we should face our own temptations?