1LA20. Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7.   In Genesis One, the first story of creation says: “Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Genesis 1:27b & c says: In the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.” The second story of creation says in Genesis 2:7: “The Lord formed man out of the clay of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.”  After man’s creation, Genesis 2:22 says: “The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.”  Genesis 1 & 2 relates that what God had made was good.  If everything was good, where did evil come from?  Genesis 3 relates that evil came from the first human beings that God had created, our first parents.  While they were still yet innocent and had not yet disobeyed God, Genesis 2:25 goes on to say: “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” After they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, they lost their innocence and “they realized that they were naked.”  While they were innocent, they had no knowledge of evil.  Evil was not available for them to choose. Genesis 3:22 relates: “Then the Lord God said: ‘See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad’”.  Our innocence was lost.  Now we must struggle to choose between what is truly good and the evil that the devil makes seem more desirable than what is truly good.

Matthew 4:1-11.  Adam was conquered by temptation but Jesus was victorious over temptation.  “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”  Jesus was both God and man.  As a man he was vulnerable to temptation but in his humanity he had built up such a powerful relationship and union with God the Father through prayer, he became indestructible.  As with any human being, in his humanity he not only grew physically, yet even more importantly, spiritually.  As such Jesus in his humanity is the ideal, perfect model for what our spiritual growth should be.  Jesus taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”  He wants us to be fearful of the power of the devil and so live every moment under the protection of our loving Father God. If encountered with a spiritual desire to advance in holiness, temptations force us more and more to live our lives growing every day in God’s grace.

Jesus had just gone through a terrible trial under the strain of forty days in the desert and the temptations.  God the Father recognized that Jesus needed to recover from all that he gone through.  So he sent the angels to minister to him.

Romans 5:12-19.  “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.” “For if by the transgression of the one, the many died how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”  Let us all claim our sinfulness so that we may claim Jesus Christ as the one who saves us from our sinfulness.