Worship call 0600 "Cross Examination"

Matthew 4:1–2 (NASB95) — 1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.

Important to note here that deity does not get hungry and is subject to no one. But even here the tempter comes to Jesus in the wilderness as he had in the throne room of God when the devil, the accuser came to make a claim against Job.

διάβολος [diabolos /dee·ab·ol·os/] adj. Slanderer; False accuser.

Now is the time for cross examination.

What happened just prior to the Jesus Journeying out into the wilderness?

His baptism

And what was proclaimed from Heaven when Jesus came up out of the water?

Matthew 3:17 (NASB95) — 17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

The Devil will now cross examine the witness. Satan Says, “we will just see about that”

Matthew 4:3 (NASB95) — 3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

The hunger was real. Jesus was starving. And in his humanity, he probably would have bodily cravings just as any of us. This Jesus is the one who had created everything out of nothing. He will even go on to feed the multitudes. There would be no effort on Jesus’ part to simply speak and sit down for a banquet.

But to so the Lord would

1. Be rejecting the Father’s plan.

Jesus was to humble himself as a man. This took sitting aside some of the attributes of deity. Jesus was still all God.

Philippians 2:5–8 (NASB95) — 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus as God had the power to turn the stones into bread. That power is not extended to his humanity, yes, he could, but not without calling upon his deity to come to the aid of His humanity.

2. In doing so Jesus would have repeated the sin of Adam.

He would have subordinated the word of the Lord under the words of Satan and oriented to them.

The results would have been disastrous. For then it would disqualify the Last Adam, our last hope for Salvation, from going to the cross for our sins. It is at that point Jesus would have to die for his own sin against God.

You see, Adam’s rule was contingent upon His complete loyalty and obedience to God. Adam was to rule the dominion within the boundaries of God’s plan.

The first sin of man was about eating. The boundary was food.

Genesis 2:17 (NASB95) — 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

The first Adam Ate and died and in Adam all die.

Will the last Adam who was much hungrier than the first Adam was at the time of the sin, would Jesus succumb, and considering the extreme condition of His hunger how easy would it be to do so.