The Bible Study Podcast, episode 494. Today, the Bible Study podcast starts a series on Christian

Maturity. Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. This is your host, Chris Christensen. We're going to do something a little different here for the next few weeks, probably about the next six weeks here. I want to do a study on Christian maturity. And we're going to talk about a variety of different topics I have in mind here as I get started, Bible study, fear, prayer, the fruit of the spirit, service, and community,

but that may change as this goes along.

This will roughly correspond with a study during the time period here in 2017, when this is coming out of Lent.

And for those of you who go to a Christian church that doesn't have a liturgical tradition,

that is, that doesn't have a calendar that talks about specific pieces of scripture in specific

times and seasons, Lent is that period before Easter where we prepare ourselves. It's the 40 days

that reminds us of the 40 days that the children of Israel spent in the desert or the 40 days that Jesus spent being tested.

But it's a time of preparation traditionally in the church, in the Catholic Church, for instance, it's a time of fasting, sometimes of giving up things.

Often giving up meat for Lent was a very traditional

thing to do. But I was reminded, as I went to a service this Wednesday at my church, and I go to

Bethel Lutheran Church in Cupertina, which I mention occasionally, we did a Lentan service,

we did an Ash Wednesday service where the pastor puts a ash cross on your

head and says, from dust you came into dust, you will return. And the verses that we were dealing with

were the verses around Jesus temptation. And let me read some of those verses to you. This is coming from

Matthew 4, verses 1 through 11.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting 40 days and 40

nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, if he were the son of God, tell these

stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread

alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him

stand on the highest point of the temple. If you were the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

he will command his angels concerning you,

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