In Matthew 3:13 Jesus came to meet John the Baptist for baptism, as soon as He stepped on the scene John the Baptist recognized Him as the Messiah, John tried to prevent Him saying that I need to be baptized by you and you are coming to me and Jesus said permit it to be so for now for we must carry out all that God requires.
When Jesus has been baptized (please know that baptism is a symbol of absolute submission to death) immediately, the heavens were opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove and settled on Him and a voice from heaven said “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Jesus Christ was creating a symbol of His death.
Jesus Christ grew in the midst of the earth in obscurity for 30 years, unknown, unheard, uncelebrated, no miracles, nothing exceptional unless for a passion for reading God’s word. All of a sudden, He came to a place where he submitted himself to a process that has been designed by God for Him to fulfill all that is right and that needs to be done. Immediately after the pronouncement was made on Him, Jesus Christ begins to operate under what we call open heaven, He started operating as somebody whose head was in heaven and his body on earth, somebody who has the capacity to see what the earth and the whole world could not see. As soon as that pronouncement was made, Matthew 4:1 Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Truly speaking, we will all expect that once an amazing power is delivered into our hands, the next thing should be ACTION. There are lot of things God wants to do in the midst of the earth but He has not been able to find people he can commit them into because, many of us if we get access to God’s power we will use it for personal gain, we will use it to celebrate ourselves, it will become something to show off. The first thing that will happen when God allows Heaven to be opened upon Jesus is for him to be tested by the devil to ensure that before he will begin to handle the tree of life he has an opportunity to deny himself of the opportunity to handle the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This was a replay of Genesis in the Garden of Eden, In Genesis, God gave Adam dominion, access and authority over the earth and God created in the Garden two trees- Tree of Knowledge of Evil and Good and Tree of Life. Adam has an opportunity to decide how he will start his journey, the same opportunity was given to Jesus Christ as soon as the heavens were opened. Adam was sent packing from a sphere where he had consistent communication with Heaven, the Bible says “he was chased by angel from that place”. Heavens open up on Jesus and the first experience would be temptation, what would the devil tempt Jesus for?
3 Key Issues:
1. If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread: Son of man now has power, Son of Man now dwells in a realm where God’s power is available. The first thing the he was asked to do is because he was hungry for 40 days, a legitimate desire, the devil comes and says “tell this stones to become loaves of bread”. Brothers and Sisters, one of the reason why God’s power and revelation is not available in these generation is because, we have consistently demonstrated that God’s power is available and useful for making bread out of stones. “Turn this stones to bread” this same stone that Jesus needs for his project, the House that He is building, there is value in those stones for bread, but Jesus Christ look at them and says “man shall not live by bread alone”, the only thing that man should live by is the word that proceed from the mouth of God and the only thing that can keep a man alive and sustained is absolute submission to God’s word not leveraging on the power that is made available to you to convert the things around you into bread. I also want you to know that the only food that is common and cheap on d face of the earth is bread, devil wants Jesus to turn the precious stones to a common thing, I pray today that your life will not become a common food. (amen).
2. If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down: When devil realized that Jesus was not ready to demonstrate the power at his own command, ladies and gentlemen, you need to understand that when power is given, that power has to be tested and the first thing is that there must be submission and then, the submission must be tested. Therefore, devil Jesus to a high mountain and said “Son of man Jump off” quoting a scripture from Psalm 91 that God will give His angel charge over you, lest you dash foot against any stone, Jesus look at him and said “you shall not tempt the Lord your God”. There’s no need for me to put myself in a position where God must defend himself. I am happy to put myself in a position where I will do only what He instructs.
3. All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me: When Satan saw that Jesus won’t turn stone to bread, he won’t show case himself, then, he went straight to the real deal, he understood the battle from the Garden of Eden about the Kingdom of God. So, he said “I will give you all of these kingdoms in all their glory, it belongs to me in the first instance, all you need to do is change allegiance, bow and worship me, take your right to choose that you got in the Garden of Eden, take it and bow to me and I will give you the kingdom of the earth, and Jesus Christ look at him and said “get the behind me Satan for it is only one person you must worship and that’s God. The Bible says from that time on, He began to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, He began to preach and says “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is looking for men who will rise up in the image of His son in whose hand He can wrought wonders even more than he wrought in the time of His Son, but they must demonstrate absolute submission to His Will, they must have no personal agenda. They must not take God’s power and use it for personal gain.