Tempations

In my quest to relearn what I have forgotten, I started today with a quiet time. This essentially is alone time spent reading the bible and studying what it says, followed by prayer. A long time ago when I first started learning about the Bible, I was told to start by reading the book of Luke, and then continuing on from there, so that is what I did today. As I started reading Luke, it read just as I remembered - like a story. Nothing too exciting or revolutionary (today anyways) about the Birth of Jesus, nothing I hadn't read before. But then I started reading about Satan tempting Jesus and began wondering why those particular items were listed.

Turn stones into bread
Jesus had been fasting for 40 days, and Satan told him to make bread. Now I can’t see anything wrong with making bread or eating. The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing better for a man than to work hard and be pleased with his work (paraphrasing), so there shouldn’t be anything wrong with working. And God gave us grain to make into bread, so there can’t be anything wrong with making bread.
There are only 2 things with this temptation that make sense for why Jesus would refuse: 1) it came from Satan, and 2) Satan questioned his authority by saying "If you are the son of God". Perhaps Satan was going to trick him? Perhaps he was going to turn the bread back into stone once Jesus turned it into bread and make a joke of him?

Be in charge of all the kingdoms
Satan stated that he was the king of all the kingdoms of the world and would give them to Jesus if he worshiped him. At first glance the answer of-course is no, but then I thought about it for a bit. If I was in charge of all the countries and states and cities in the world, I could do so much. There would be no more wars, no more poverty, global pollution would decrease, people would be given freedoms they never had before, justice would come to those who had none, and the world would be much better off. What couldn’t I do? How would the world not be better? People for generations would discuss how I joined the world together in peace and made it better for everyone. Why wouldn’t I take that deal?
But, is that the full deal? If Satan put me in charge of everything, would I be able to rule it justly, would I have the ability to make the world better for everyone, would there be unforeseen consequences to this deal with the devil?
I think back to one of my favorite movie series - StarWars. In Episode 3, Anakin Skywalker makes a deal with the Sith to bring peace to the galaxy. Through his direct actions there is no more war, no more death, and the galaxy can begin to be harmonious. However as we know, this isn’t the end of the story. Instead of the good guy he thought he was, and the peace and tranquility he was bringing, he became the evil tyrant bringing fear to everyone.
Obviously Jesus made the right choice - eternal life for everyone who follows. But this brings the temptation a little closer to me, what it might mean today, and how it might be presented to me.

Jump from the tower
Satan quotes the Bible to Jesus saying that he will be ok if he jumps from the tower. Now it doesn’t take much research into the quoting to see that the original text doesn’t refer to people jumping off buildings, and therefore shouldn’t be taken as such. But Satan also questioned Jesus's authority again by saying "If you are the son of God". Many of the demons that Jesus cast out immediately identified Jesus as the son of God, so Satan must have, but why the questioning? Perhaps it was a test to see if Jesus knew the Bible? If I was posed with a similar temptation, "If you are a follower of Jesus", would I realize that the verse quoted was used improperly?