The Test

Test 1 : Who is your call for ?

Matthew 4:1–4 (LSB)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

Jesus takes this from Deuteronomy 8:2-3

Deuteronomy 8:2–3 LSB

“And you shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. “And He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh.

It’s a lesson the Israelites needed to learn from hunger and humiliation and Jesus is learning that same lesson.

Our faith is really and truly tested only when we are brought into very severe conflicts, and when even hell itself seems opened to swallow us up.

John Calvin (French Reformer)