"Lord of the Angels" Matthew 4:5-7 Sunday Morning Worship Service

One of the capstones of American sporting life is WrestleMania.

WrestleMania, of course, is the championship of the world, what used to be known as WWF, World Wrestling Federation, now rebranded as WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.

Oh yeah.

WrestleMania is the annual event where they pack tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people into stadiums for these wrestling matches, hundreds of thousands if you take the attendance over a couple days.

Nevertheless, for the longest time, WrestleMania had the record for the world's most attended indoor sporting event.

And I know the word or the phrase sporting event is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but I'm happy for it.

Anyway, WrestleMania has brought us such features as Jesse, the body ventura, Hulk Hogan, Mr.

T.

Hulk Hogan and Mr.

T were on the same tag team, by the way, in one of the early WrestleManias.

The Rock, Stone Cold, Steve Austin, and other famous wrestlers, famous Americans, I dare say.

Of course, WrestleMania became a hotbed for cameo star sightings and appearances.

And if you were really famous, you didn't just go to WrestleMania.

You had to actually do something there.

So stars would sometimes referee matches or be an announcer or a ringmaster.

You may be thinking of one of the more famous instances of this, or infamous, depending on your perspective, was President Trump going to WrestleMania.

He not only showed up, but he introduced a match or two, and then he, along with some others, held down the president of WWE in center ring and shaved his head.

You gotta love America.

Now, we'll get back to WrestleMania later.

I will mention this though.

Supposedly, professional wrestling, the results are fixed before the match.

Did you know this?

Lots of people felt compelled to tell me this after the first hour.

And I don't know if I I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of truth.

Anyway, we'll return to WrestleMania later this morning.

I just want that in your mind.

We're gonna put it on the shelf.

We'll circle back to it later.

It has a purpose.

This morning we see a bit of a WrestleMania match here in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

We see a showdown between Jesus and the devil.

We see them going toe-to-toe, fighting in the main event here.

Similar to WrestleMania, I suppose, the result of this confrontation was described at the very beginning of the Bible.

We already know how it will end.

The match is fixed.

We know that Jesus will triumph, he will crush the head of the devil.

We know that the devil will lash out back at Jesus and pierce, puncture, wound his heel.

We don't know when exactly that confrontation takes place, but in the background of the Bible, since Genesis 3 forward, this showdown has been kind of hovering.

We know that a descendant of Adam will go against a descendant of the serpent.

We know that the seed of man will fight against the seed of the devil, and that the devil will have his head crushed.

The Bible makes that clear back in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

There's been lots of secondary battles through the years and the pages of Scripture.

We see demons possessing people to attack the descendants of Adam and Seth.

That's back in Genesis 6 before the flood.

We see the devil inspiring people to wipe out the babies under the age of uh era of Molech with the Amalekites.

We see the devil even filling, sending an angel, a demon, to fill the mouth of one of the prophets of Israel to attack the person sitting on the throne of David.

That's 1 Kings 22.

There had been no shortage of confrontations between fallen angels, namely demons and the devil, and the children of men.

But what you find in Matthew chapter 4 is they're no longer sending their teams out.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Here it is the main event.

Here it is not just a descendant of David, but the descendant of David.

Not just a descendant of Adam, but the second Adam, going up against not a demon, not a demonically inspired false teacher, but against the devil, Satan himself.

Let me read to you these temptations, as they're called in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

We're only going to look at the second temptation, verses 5 through 7, but we'll read beginning in verse 1.

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

The tempter came to him and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you.

On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

That's from Psalm 91.

We read that earlier for a scripture reading at the beginning of the service.

Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Again the devil took him to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, and he said to them, All these I'll give you if you will fall down and worship me.

And Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

Those are the three temptations of Jesus.

I gave this outline to you.

Last time we looked at the first temptation, I'll give it to you again next week, because all three of these temptations, they're not redundant, they're not merely duplicating each other.

All three temptations are different.

They all take place in different geographic locations.

I hope you notice that.

One in the wilderness, one in the temple, one on the top of a mountain.

They all have different motives behind them.

One is the temptation to the lust of the flesh, one is temptation to the pride of life, one is temptation to the lust of the eyes.

And they are all tempting or testing would be the other word for it.

Remember, in Greek, the word for tempt and test is the same word.

They're all testing Jesus at the same point.

I mean, at different points.

They're testing whether or not Jesus is the true Israel.

They're testing whether or not Jesus is the true Adam.

And they're testing whether or not Jesus is the true Son of God.

And so the devil does not just merely go from one to the same one or to a uh same one a third time, but he has three different temptations to expose three different potential areas of weakness in Jesus.

Now, of course, all three of the devil's temptations fail.

All three of them have the function of establishing the identity of Jesus.

That he is the true Israel.

He was tempted in the wilderness where Israel was tempted.

Israel, after they were led from Egypt, wandered in the wilderness where they were fed by God.

Israel grumbled against God.

The scripture speaks of this as God testing Israel and as Israel testing God.

God passes his test, of course.

Israel fails hers.

Israel is not satisfied with their food.

1 Corinthians 10 says they put the Lord to the test and grumbled there.

They were opened, ground opened up, and they were swallowed up.

Jesus is tested in the same place.

The devil tests him to grumble against God, specifically about food, so that he would fail where Israel failed.

But instead of failing, Jesus instead says something that Israel never said.

Jesus declares, it is better to starve to death than to go against God's word.

Man does not live on bread alone, but on every single word that comes from God's mouth.

And so indeed the words back in Matthew chapter 2 are fulfilled.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Out of Egypt I called my son.

Jesus is the true Israel, he is the better Israel.

He stands in Israel's place.

He is the fulfillment of the, in many ways, he's the fulfillment of the promises to Israel.

The law was a schoolmaster to separate Israel until the Savior came.

Jesus has fulfilled the law, and he is the true and better Israel.

That was the first temptation, and the devil failed.

And so now we're on to the second temptation.

I'll give you an outline that kind of keeps our wrestling theme this morning.

Round one.

Round one in our second temptation here is Satan versus Adam.

Satan versus Adam.

In order to understand the second temptation, which is that Jesus will throw himself off the temple and he will be caught by angels.

That's the temptation.

You really have to understand what angels are doing here to begin with.

If you recall, angels were made on the first day of creation.

This is described in Job chapter 38, verse 6.

Job 38:6

Angels rejoiced at the creation of the stars and of the universe.

Angels themselves are created beings.

Angels are not divine.

They're not God.

The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, is not an angel.

He is divine.

Jesus is divine.

Angels are not divine, they're angels.

They're created beings.

There's a creature creation distinction.

Angels are not the creator, they are the creature.

They are made by God.

And the first thing they do is they celebrate creation, they rejoice in creation.

God on the sixth day has basically finished his work of creation, has made the earth beautiful and lovely and filled the waters with fish and the planet with trees and animals that are just incredible.

And the earth is the capstone of God's creation.

The angels look at the earth and they see how beautiful it is.

And some of the angels want dominion on the earth.

They want the earth to be theirs.

This is described in Psalm chapter 8, where they look at the world and they marvel at it.

Psalms 8 · chapter mention

They desire it.

They desire it.

But God doesn't give the earth to angels.

Instead, he gives the earth to Adam, who is, in the words of Psalm 8, a little lower than the angels.

Which is kind of a funny way of saying it, isn't it?

In the same way, Jesus was a little hungry after fasting for 40 days.

Adam was a little lower than the angels.

I mean, angels can fly.

That's kind of cool.

Angels don't die.

Adam is made out of dirt.

That's a little lower than the angels.

And the devil, this is described in Isaiah 14 and Exodus 28, looks at the earth and wants it for himself.

He wants to be like God.

He wants dominion over the earth.

And so he rebels against God and takes a third of the angels with him and goes to war against Adam.

This is why angels hate people.

Angels don't just hate Christians.

It's not like angels hate people because people love God and Jesus.

Angels hate people because they're related to Adam.

Angels hate people because people have dominion on the earth.

God told Adam to be fruitful, and Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and to subdue the earth.

God gave the earth to mankind to rule.

And then he gave angels to serve people.

Imagine being an angel and thinking you deserve dominion on the earth.

And not only do you not get dominion on the earth, you are told to serve the dude that was made out of dirt.

Well, a third of the angels are upset about that and go to war.

And this is why Adam and Eve are attacked by the devil.

The devil is upset.

Remember, the family is the tool that God is going to use to subdue the earth.

Adam and Eve are supposed to be fruitful and multiply.

They're supposed to create a world of weed pullers and animal tamers.

They're supposed to create a world that is beautiful by having people cultivate it.

And so the devil goes after Adam and Eve.

That is the first challenge.

The devil attacks them, not just at any point, but he attacks them at the point of marriage.

He approaches Eve rather than Adam and lures her and tempts her, gets her to question God and God's goodness.

Adam, of course, goes along with this.

He doesn't step between the devil and his wife, but he feeds her to the lions or to the serpent, so to speak, allows her to answer, and she sins.

Adam follows her into sin.

And so the human race is plunged into sin.

When the Bible speaks of us being born as sinners, it says it's because Adam sinned, even though Eve sinned first.

Because Adam was our representative.

Adam was the one who was in the garden on our behalf, not Eve.

Adam stood in our place and he fell.

As Americans, we should understand a little bit of representative democracy.

There's a sense in which you don't get to vote on every bill that comes before Congress.

You don't get to show up and vote.

But there's another sense in which you do have a vote in every bill that comes before Congress because you've sent your representative there.

Somebody represents Fairfax County, or I don't even know what the districts are, but somebody represents where you live, and that person goes to across the river to Washington, D.C.

and votes in your place.

And you think, yeah, but I didn't even vote for that person.

It doesn't matter.

They're your representative.

That person votes in your place, whether or not you even voted for him.

That's irrelevant.

He won the election.

He votes for you.

He's your representative.

Well, that's what was happening in the garden.

Adam was our representative.

You say, I didn't vote for him, doesn't matter.

He's your representative.

And he in the garden goes against the devil and he sins in the garden, and so you sinned in Adam.

Your representative plunged the world into sin, and so you are born as a sinner.

You wonder why why is there so much anger and strife and murder and just debauchery and evil and wickedness and sin and suffering in the world?

All those things are in the world because Adam sinned.

He was your representative.

We blame for this.

And you think, huh?

I wish I was my representative.

I wouldn't have sinned.

I would have stood against the devil.

If I would have got to represent myself, I would have done it differently.

Would you now have done it differently?

I don't know.

Sometimes I think I would have stood against the devil.

I would have seen through it.

I would have said, devil, don't offer me that fruit.

Don't get me to question whether or not God really wants me to know the difference between good or evil.

God is good because He made me and that's good enough for me.

That would be a great answer.

I think I would say that sometimes.

But then I also think, I make vows all the time.

I'm like, you know what?

I'm gonna love my wife more and be a better dad and waste less time online and you know just be more productive.

I can't even keep those kind of vows for 20 minutes.

So maybe I wouldn't stand against the devil as bravely as I think I would have in my mind.

It's kind of irrelevant, though, because Adam was your representative and he plunged the human race into sin.

Angels, meanwhile, are still supposed to serve people.

Hebrews 1 verse 14 says angels are given as ministering spirits for those who will inherit salvation.

Hebrews 1:14

So even in light of sin, even though Adam plunged the human race into sin, angels didn't get reassigned once people became sinners.

God didn't see Adam plunge the world into sin and say, you know what, on second thought, maybe this whole thing should have gone to the angels.

No, he reiterates angels need to serve people.

So you have a third of the angels that attack people, two-thirds of the angels that serve people?

That's the playout of the fall.

You're born into sin because Adam, your representative, sinned.

Angels are supposed to serve you even though you're a sinner, and the devil and his angels hate you because you're related to Adam.

The round one of this challenge, Satan versus Adam, goes to the devil.

Adam sinned and you sinned right along with him.

But that leads to round two.

Round two is Satan versus the second Adam.

Satan versus the second Adam.

And this is verse five of Matthew chapter four.

The devil took Jesus to the holy city, that's Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

That word for pinnacle there, it's an unusual word.

It's the word for wing.

Uh it's not the word for the highest point, it's the word for the wing of a bird.

And we might use it in a building sometimes and talk about the wing of a building, but it's not really used that way of the temple.

Um, it might be the outside of the temple.

I don't think Jesus would go to the Holy of Holies here.

He's not a Levite.

I don't think he'd go into the middle of the temple.

Um Israel, you understand the wall of Jerusalem goes around all of Jerusalem, but the outer wall of Jerusalem and the outer wall of the temple on one side of the temple are the same wall.

So the temple is built into the wall of Jerusalem on one side.

On the other side of that wall is the Kidron Valley, the brook that goes down.

So it's a very high point.

Even today, even without the temple there, it's the Temple Mount on top of that wall, it's still a huge drop-off all the way down.

You overlook the Mount of Olives.

If you face one way, if you face the other way, you can overlook all of Jerusalem.

So this is where the devil takes Jesus up to the highest point, I think, of the of the wall, where on one side he can oversee the valley, he can see the Mount of Olives, he can see uh that area.

Behind him, he sees just the beauty of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the city where God said he would set his name.

The temple is the place where God dwelled in the Old Testament.

His Spirit filled the temple.

This is where God dwelled on earth.

And this is where the devil takes Jesus.

And he takes him there for a reason.

I think the reason is it's not hard to discern because it's Psalm 91.

We read it earlier.

Remember, Psalm 91 says, He who flees to the temple, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will be protected, will be received.

This is a general promise for people that are part of the old covenant.

If they receive a blessing of the old covenant, they're walking in covenant obedience, they can run to God for protection and God will protect them.

You can run for God into the temple and God will receive you.

This is true of old covenant people.

God protects them.

There's a whole genre of Bible verses that describe God's protection of his people in the temple.

Psalm 61, he protects you from your enemies when you go to the temple.

Psalm 57 from lions, Psalm 68 from jackals, from disease, from pestilence.

When you run to God for protection, he protects you.

Including in Psalm 91, that if the angels need to come rescue you, the angels will come rescue you when you flee to him for protection.

So that's why the devil takes him there.

Jesus, here is the place.

If God is going to protect you anywhere, it's going to be right here.

And now throw yourself off, and the Lord will rescue you through his angels.

After all, aren't the angels supposed to be serving you?

That's a very interesting question.

Are the angels supposed to be serving Jesus?

And I think so.

Jesus is the eternal Son of God.

You see this in Psalm 2.

Yahweh said to me, You are my Son.

Today I've begotten you.

This is speaking of the deity of our Savior.

He's the eternally begotten Son of God, the second person of the Trinity.

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.

In other words, Jesus, because he's God, it all belongs to him.

The angels should absolutely be serving God.

That's not even under question, right?

Angels are supposed to serve God.

But in particular for Jesus, I think of Psalm, I mean of Deuteronomy 32.

Speaking of Israel, we've already established from the first temptation that Jesus is the true Israel.

Deuteronomy 32, Yahweh found Israel in the desert land, in the howling waste of the wilderness.

That's where the first temptation took place.

He encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle stirs up its nest that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings.

There's that word again, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.

The pinion is the outer feather of a bird's wing.

So there's this image here of people who are rescued, Israel being rescued by God from the wilderness wanderings, passing the test as Israel, not grumbling against God, found in the wilderness, falling, and God will swoop up that person and protect that person in his own wings.

Psalm 91 says they'll do that to the angels catching the person.

I know some people say the devil is misusing scripture here.

There might be a sense in which that's true, but if you if you study Psalm 91, listen, the devil is using Psalm 91 almost better than we understand it.

I mean, Psalm 91 is written about the faithful person running to the temple for protection and being swept up by angels, and even Deuteronomy 32, the wings of God catching him as he falls.

That's what the Psalm's for.

And so that's where the devil goes after Jesus.

It's the temple.

Deuteronomy 12 18.

That's where God displays his favor.

It's the temple where God has put his name over the world.

World.

It's the capital city of Israel, but it's the place where the nations, 1 Kings 8 says, the nations will pray to Yahweh, and if they pray facing the temple, God will hear them.

That's where Jesus is now.

The devil has led him there and now said, if you fall, won't the angels catch you?

And the answer is absolutely the angels would catch him.

I mean, angels were designed to serve people, just generally speaking.

It's no better assignment for an angel to serve the Son of God, the God man himself, who has never sinned.

There's the blessings and cursings in the old covenant.

Israel mostly deserves the curses, of course.

This is Deuteronomy 27 through 30.

There's blessings and curses in the Old Covenant.

If you keep the Old Covenant, God blesses you.

If you break the old covenant, he curses you.

You follow God, he causes rain.

You reject God, he withholds the rain.

That's like standard old covenant ethics right there.

Israel is the only true Jew who has completely or Jesus is the only true Jew who has completely kept the law.

So if anyone deserves the blessings of the covenant, it's him.

If anyone deserves to be served by angels, it's him.

If anyone could fall off the temple and be caught by angels, it's him fleeing to the temple for refuge from the devil's attacks.

This is what Psalm 91 is for.

So why was the devil tempting Jesus with this?

In what way is this a temptation?

If angels should catch Jesus, if angels are designed to minister to Jesus, they're gonna minister to Jesus in like five verses from now.

Verse 11, they're gonna be making him breakfast.

So the problem here is not having angels serve Jesus.

What exactly is the temptation?

Well, I think the temptation is to get Jesus to operate outside of his humanity, to leave the role of Adam here and to fall back into his position as God.

So let me give you your third point of the outline here.

Round one was Satan versus Adam.

Round two, Satan versus second Adam.

But here's our rule: no tag team wrestling in this.

So I said the WrestleMania analogies on the shelf.

We're gonna go fetch it real quick and use it real quick.

In professional wrestling, you know what a tag team is, right?

There's a guy in the ring getting beat on, and as he's about to lose, he can crawl over to the side.

Just barely make it and stretch out his hand.

And he tags his teammate, and his teammate comes in fully energized and he can win the match.

It's tag team wrestling.

Now it's always dangerous to use human analogies to talk about theology.

Every analogy has its limitations and weakness.

I understand that.

But work with me.

It's WrestleMania.

Jesus is one person, but he is one person with two natures.

He is truly God, and he is truly man.

Those two natures are not mixed.

You don't put them in a pot, stir them up, and out comes Jesus.

Jesus is the possesses a human body.

Inside of that body is his soul, his human soul, and his divine nature.

They coexist in one person.

They don't mix, as I said, otherwise, his divine nature would swallow up his human nature.

The divine nature does not cancel out the human nature.

And through most of Jesus' ministry, he operates out of his human nature.

When I say he has two natures, that means he has two wills.

He has two decision-making faculties.

That's what a nature is.

He possesses both of them, the divine nature and the human nature, in one person.

Now, this is foreign to us, of course, because we all possess one nature.

We understand that.

But Jesus is truly God and truly man.

So as I said, two wills.

Jesus, through his ministry, operates mostly out of his human nature.

His human nature, he can get tired as a human.

He needs food as a human.

He goes to sleep on the boat as a human.

He can say, I don't know the hour of the Son's return.

Only God knows that.

Even the Son of God doesn't know that.

Speaking of his human nature, there's things he does, he has to learn to talk and to walk and all that.

There's things he doesn't know as a human.

He's operating in his human nature.

There are times where he operates in his divine nature when he, for example, walks on water and rebukes the wind and the waves, for example.

So the question is here in his temptation, is he being tempted as God or is he being tempted as man?

So back up a little bit and ask yourself, can God sin?

And the answer to that is no.

Alright?

Theology 101, God can't sin.

Sin is something contrary to God's nature.

If God does it, it's by definition not sin.

So God cannot sin.

Can God be tempted to sin?

Also, no.

That's James 1, verse 13.

James 1:13

God cannot be tempted, nor does he himself tempt anyone.

Each person is tempted when they're led astray by their own sinful desires.

So God cannot be tempted.

And yet, Matthew chapter 4, verse 1, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.

Matthew 4:1

And so he is being tempted in his humanity here.

That's the point of temptation.

He is operating as a human.

That's so important to understand.

Because he is operating as the second Adam.

That was the point I covered a second ago.

He is our new representative going against the devil.

And so the devil is tempting him as a man and telling him to throw himself off of the temple, knowing that the angels would come and rescue him because he is the Lord of the angels.

He's the creator of the angels.

So would they not come rescue him?

Couldn't he summon them?

That's the temptation to get Jesus to kind of fall back on his deity or to return to the tag team match.

The picture is the devil attacking Jesus as a man and getting Jesus to tap out and bring in the divine nature and let the divine nature boss Satan around.

You understand that Satan is submissive to God.

He rebels against God, but he has to serve God.

He has to be subordinate to God.

There's no tension in the Bible about who's going to win between God and the devil.

It's not a yin-yang kind of thing.

It's not waxing and waning, good and evil in the world, sometimes God, sometimes the devil.

No, there's only God.

The devil is subordinate to God.

The devil knows he can't fight God.

Think of Job chapter 1.

Job 1 · chapter mention

God summons the devil and the devil has to come.

God sets the limits on what the devil can do, and the devil can't operate outside of that.

The devil is submissive in that sense to God.

He hates God and he rebels against him by attacking Adam, but only because God lets him do it.

So there are very clear limits to this.

So the devil is attacking Jesus not as God, but as man.

He's tempting him as man.

And so now the question is: will Jesus resist the devil as man, or will he fall back on his deity, summon the divine nature to order the devil to be gone?

If Jesus would have availed himself of the challenge, if Jesus would have leapt off the highest part of the wall of the temple, if he would have leapt off of it, certainly the angels would have caught him.

The angels are okay to minister to Jesus.

He would have been well within his rights.

If God comes to earth in a human body, certainly God can play hopscotch on the temple.

It's his temple, his angels.

It would have been within Jesus' rights to do this, but it would not have been within his role.

His role here was not to demonstrate his authority over angels.

His role here was to stand against the temptation as the second Adam.

I hope you understand the point of this second temptation is to pry Jesus out of his humanity and to get him to fall back into his deity.

Had Jesus resisted the devil as God, we would still be dead in our sins because we would not have a mediator who is truly God and truly sinless man.

We need Jesus to operate as a man and stand against the devil as a man so that we can say there is a sinless man who can take our sins on himself.

If Jesus would have defeated the devil as God, there would be a man there.

But he's not a man with obedience.

He's not a man who is tempted in every way like we are tempted.

He's not a second Adam.

When Adam was tempted, he couldn't say, Hey, devil, go away.

I'm God and I own you.

So with Jesus to pass the test, he has to pass the test as a man.

Otherwise, we are lost.

So people always ask, could Jesus have sinned?

It's a very common question.

The most common question I got after the first week I preached on this was, are you gonna talk about could Jesus have sinned?

And so yes, right here.

Hypothetical questions are always dangerous.

That's my caveat.

I hate answering hypothetical questions.

Because it's every hypothetical question boils down to this.

Could something have happened that didn't happen?

You think of sports questions.

You know, what would have happened to this sports team had they not traded that player to the other team?

Then when they played that team they traded him to, they would have won because that guy was batting third, and then he would have batted second on this team, and they totally would have won the World Series.

You can't ask that kind of question.

What would have happened if something that didn't happen happened differently?

How would that have affect everything?

It's it's an odd question.

Nevertheless, I understand why people are asking it.

They want to know more about Jesus and was there the potential of sin here?

So you have to think very carefully about your words.

Could Jesus have sinned?

Did Jesus have a human body that was capable of actions that were sinful?

And the answer is obviously yes.

He has a human body, it can do what human bodies do.

So in that sense, Jesus has the capacity to sin, or to say it this way, he has the hardware to sin.

However, sin comes from a heart that desires things that aren't rightfully it, and those desires grow forth and bring forth sin.

Jesus' heart does not have unmet expectations or unfulfilled desires.

Jesus' heart, his human heart, his human will, is completely yielded to the Father.

And so in that sense, there's no source for sin in his heart.

So here's how I would answer it.

Jesus has the hardware to sin, but not the software to sin.

He has the body, but he doesn't have the sinful desires.

Part of being truly human is, of course, having a body, which Jesus possesses.

Part of being truly human is not sinning.

Adam was truly human before he sinned.

Jesus is truly human, and it is being tested at this point.

Can he be a true and full human and resist the devil?

That's exactly what is being questioned.

I think it's short-circuiting that question.

Could Jesus have sinned to say, no, Jesus couldn't sin because he's God and God can't sin.

That's short-circuiting what's happening here.

That's missing what's happening here.

It is true.

God can't sin and Jesus is God, so in that sense, Jesus can't sin.

But that's missing what's happening here.

The question isn't as God could Jesus sin.

The question is, as a human being, could Jesus sin?

And I'm saying he lacks the sinful desires.

That's what's being exposed right here.

He has no sinful desires that would produce sin.

Which leads to the end of our wrestling match here.

Jesus pins the devil.

He withstands the devil.

Look at what Jesus says in verse 7.

Again.

I love that he introduces it with again.

I'm telling you, devil, for the second time.

You're wrong.

Again, devil, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

I love that Jesus answered the devil.

You don't have to answer the devil.

If you're tempted to sin, you should run, by the way.

That's what you should do.

Temptation, run.

But Jesus digs in.

He doesn't run, he doesn't close his ears.

I'm not listening to you.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Devil, it is written.

It is written.

Do not put Yahweh to the test.

I want you to see something wonderful here about the Lord.

In using Deuteronomy 6 this way, Jesus is putting himself under the authority of the law.

That's what I think the devil was not ready for.

Jesus responds by saying, God has a law given to Israel, and I'm underneath it.

As true Israel, I am a servant of the law.

It has authority over me, and I will not break it.

So Jesus is the lawgiver, but he's also the law keeper.

And so the devil says, throw yourself off, let the angels catch you.

He's appealing to Jesus as the lawgiver.

And Jesus responds by saying, I'm going to operate here as the law keeper.

I am true Israel.

I am under the authority of the law, and I will keep the law perfectly.

I won't test the Lord.

Testing the Lord is when you testing anybody is when you make them do something to prove their worth.

You understand this in school?

You're tested in the school.

Prove what you know.

In the Bible, the word is often used to put God to the test and make God prove that something he said is actually true.

Thomas Manton, the Puritan, defines testing God this way, quote, as making a trial of a thing or person, namely God, to see what he will or will not do.

In other words, God says he's true, and you say, okay, now prove it.

That's testing God.

And it is a sin to test God.

It is a sin to say, God, I know you said do this, but I'm not going to do it unless you prove that you really meant it.

That's a sin.

The Pharisees tested Jesus.

We know you say you're the Messiah.

Now prove it.

Do a sign or wonder.

Ananias and Sapphira tested the Holy Spirit, Peter said.

They only gave some of their money and they danced around and paraded as if they'd given it all.

They were testing the Holy Spirit.

In other words, saying, Holy Spirit, are you building this church or not?

Because we're going to act like we're building it.

Now do something about it.

Oh, and the Holy Spirit did something about it, didn't he?

Two fresh graves is what he did about it.

Paul, 1 Corinthians 10, says the Israelites tested God in the wilderness by grumbling.

And God opened up a hole and swallowed him up.

It's a sin to test God.

The devil here is telling Jesus, you got Psalm 91?

Is it true?

Prove it.

Well, of course Psalm 91 is true.

Of course it's true.

But Jesus is going to be submissive to the law and not act in a way that makes God prove that it's true.

That's testing the Lord.

And that's what he does.

That's what the devil wants him to do.

And Jesus says, I'm not going to put Yahweh to the test.

I know Psalm 91 is true.

I know who the Lord of the angels is.

I know that I'm a covenant keeper.

And I will keep the covenant right now.

In doing this, do you see how Jesus' obedience cancels out Adam's sin?

If Adam is your representative, you are under sin and transgression and death.

Adam's sin is your sin because he was your representative.

But here, Jesus' obedience can become your obedience if Jesus is your representative.

That's the great fork in the road.

By Jesus' answer here, he establishes himself as the second Adam, as the true and the better Adam.

And so that gives every human being a pretty stark choice.

Are you under Adam or are you under Jesus?

If you say Adam is my representative, then you are merely a sinful human being.

You will die and you will be held accountable for your own sin.

You will be held accountable for Adam's sin because he sinned in your place, and all of your sins will be brought before God for divine judgment.

That's what happens if Adam is your representative.

You are born in sin and trespasses and death, and you will die in judgment.

But if Jesus is your representative, then Adam is voted out of office.

If Jesus is your representative, you don't get Adam's sin, you get Jesus' righteousness.

Your sin is taken away.

Your sin is given to Jesus who bears it on the cross and dies in your place.

Had Jesus sinned, you couldn't bear your sin.

If Jesus sinned, he would die on the cross for his own sin.

Only Jesus' death can only be salvific, can only save you if he was sinless.

And because he's sinless, he can take your sin from you and he can give you his righteousness.

He gives you his obedience.

That's the great exchange here.

So every human being then has that choice.

Romans 5 verse 14 says Adam was a type of the one to come.

Romans 5:14

Adam was just the outline.

There was a true and better Adam coming next.

A true and better Adam coming later.

Namely Jesus, who goes back to where Adam was tempted and stands, just by way of contrast.

Adam was tempted in paradise, Jesus tempted in the wilderness.

Adam tempted with his belly full, Jesus tempted with his belly empty.

Adam tested and tempted with his wife at his side, Jesus tempted in isolation.

Adam tempted, surrounded by beauty, Jesus tempted, surrounded by nothing but the devil.

Adam fails and gives you death.

Jesus succeeds and offers you obedience, not your own obedience, but his obedience.

God, we're thankful that you have given us a better way to live by giving us a better life, by giving us a better representative.

Psalm 91 says, All those who flee to you will be received by you.

We know the church is the temple of the living God.

It's your building on earth.

It's what you're constructing, the lives of those who are sealed with your Holy Spirit.

And so I pray for people who are here today that have never fled to your temple for refuge.

They've never come to Christ through the church, through the word.

They've never come to Christ through his death and resurrection.

They've never come to Christ as their head.

I pray today they would do that.

I pray today you would open their eyes to the reality that they either under Adam are shackled in sin.

And you would depry them free from the clutches of Adam.

You depry them free from the clutches of the devil.

And you place their hope and their faith in Jesus, the second Adam, who gives us life.

We know that Adam died and is buried.

Jesus died, was buried, and resurrected, showing that all those who come to him will indeed have life.

We know that our days through faith in Christ last longer than our earthly life.

They go straight on into glory forever and ever and ever.

We long for that day in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.