Worship call 0599 Cross examination

The Lord is tested by the devil, as Adam took from the tree and all died, Jesus will be tempted to turn stones into bread and feed himself. One act condemned man. the other act would leave man in his condemnation.

Will we ever know just how close we came to hell by a simply act of eating?

This is another fine day in the Lord.

Mark 1:12–13 (NASB95) — 12 Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. 13 And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

2048 ἔρημος [eremos /er·ay·mos/] adjective..

1. solitary, lonely, desolate, uninhabited.

a. used of places.

i. a desert, wilderness.

ii. deserted places, lonely regions. 1a3 an uncultivated region fit for pasturage.

b. used of persons.

i. deserted by others.

ii. deprived of the aid and protection of others, especially of friends, acquaintances, kindred.

iii. bereft.

1. of a flock deserted by the shepherd.

2. of a women neglected by her husband, from whom the husband withholds himself.

The Adjective Er ay mos has nothing but bad connotation. It is a place void of the good things of God, blessings. It is the environment that exists because of the negative volition of man.

Genesis 3:17–18 (NASB95) — 17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;

To Cain after murdering his brother

Genesis 4:11–12 (NASB95) — 11 “Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 “When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.”

Hebrews 6:8 (NASB95) — 8 but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

Romans 8:20–22 (NASB95) — 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

It is a place that the average person avoids. It is a place where the value system changes and the things that are valued most are those things that will keep one alive.

It was a place where Moses would spend 40 years.

It was the place where the children of God were driven out to spend 40 years learning to depend and have faith in Yahweh.

Jesus was among the wild beasts.

Another result of the curse of sin which came through the man’s decision to go against God.

Genesis 9:2 (NASB95) — 2 “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky.

Not yet is this is the kingdom. Not yet can we look outside and say that this is the kingdom which the Lord has promised.

Jesus here is the suffering servant. He is on hostile territory dealing first with the lost in Salvation

But in his second advent there will be change.

Isaiah 35:1–2 (NASB95) — 1 The wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus 2 It will blossom profusely And rejoice with rejoicing and shout of joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, The majesty of our God.

Isaiah 11:6–10 (NASB95) — 6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. 7 Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea. 10 Then in that day The nations will resort to the root of Jesse, Who will stand as a signal for the peoples; And His resting place will be glorious.

Mark 1:12 (NASB95) — 12 Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.

This was the training and testing ground for the people of Israel when they were driven out from Egypt.

Exodus 12:33 (NASB95) — 33 The Egyptians urged the people, to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, “We will all be dead.”

But where the people had failed to trust God in the wilderness, Jesus as he will continually do is to reverse the negative and accomplish what others could not.

Mark 1:13 (NASB95) — 13 And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

It was into this wilderness that The Holy Spirit impelled Jesus to go.

διακονέω [diakoneo /dee·ak·on·eh·o/] v

The Angels were serving the needs of the Lord

Mark is stressing the humanity of our Lord.

Here the second Adam goes out into the wilderness, a wilderness that is produced by man’s own negative volition. Among the wild beast which were out of control of man. This was a hostile environment that was in rebellion against the dominion ruler which was man. It certainly was not the GOOD that God had declared in Genesis 1:31

Point of Doctrine:

1. Just as Adam rebelled against God, the environment which Adam was to subdue and rule over rebelled against him.

2. Jesus will have to endure the hostile environment as he will have endured the hostility of man.

3. Both environment and the enemies will be subjected to his future reign.

God bless the missionaries.

God bless those who go into the worst environments against great opposition, and where their lives are put on the line, to win souls for Christ. they are truly the front-line warriors as they take on the image of Christ and His mission.

And might it be that the same ministering angels follows those in those kinds of environments,

The ministering angels will tend to Jesus all the way up to the night prior to going to the cross, but when Jesus is hanging on the cross and taking our sins, it is then that he will be left all alone to suffer the full brunt of the wrath of His father for the sake of men.

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 more 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.

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