Matthew 4:1-11
Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
We can learn much about God and Jesus when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted...We also can learn things about ourselves as we read about Jesus and the forty day temptation with the evil one...
It seems to me that God does not like to do miracles...The Son was given complete power by His Father, and He could have done a miracle at anytime...But Jesus does not...God does not use His power for personal gain or for His personal needs...This is only an opinion, but God may not want to intervene and do miracles, because of His love for us as He sees our daily struggles...(If man could do miracles, and let's say you walked daily down a busy street...I would suspect you would see at least one miracle by a man, woman, and child everyday)...God does not do miracles in front or with large groups very often...The only evidence we have of large followings seeing miracles are with Moses and the Israeli people wandering the desert...This is one of the two large group miracles...When God took His people out of Egypt during the Exodus we read about many miracles when God is ready to take His people out of Egypt...Then He continues with more miracles as He, Moses, and His people wander the desert on there way to the Promised Land...The other group miracles are done by Jesus...He feeds four thousand and then five thousand miraculously...Almost and it seems with these are the two exceptions...God does not like to use miracles to get a large group to follow Him...Jesus refused to do miracles for the Pharisees and also for Herod...He does not do miracles just to do miracles...
As we read through the temptation of Christ, we see He does not sin...God does not sin in anyway, even when tempted in the most toughest of aspects...Jesus was in the hot desert, had not eaten for days and still resisted temptation and sin...A man would have been completely exhausted and would have done quite a bit to get food and water...God does not compromise Himself in any situation, even if the evil one is involved...God or Jesus could have done a miracle and gotten food or water, at any time...God even in the most extreme situations of this very trying forty day period did no miracles...And as you read about this temptation and during this trying forty day period, He remains humble...
God never changes...These attributes are still our God today....We know we need to live on the Word of God...As you look around you see very few group miracles...The miracles He does, it seems, are personal, with your personal relationship with Him...One of His greatest attribute might be He can do miracles for us, and we do not even recognize it as a miracle...After all, He was in the desert without food and water and He survived...That is a miracle I overlooked, when I first read about His temptation...