The Lord Jesus traveled from Galilee to Judea and the Jordan River, some 70 miles by foot, for John the Baptist to baptize Him.  This inaugurated His three year ministry.  John baptized unto repentance.  Jesus didn’t need to repent, so John said, I shouldn’t immerse you; it should be you immersing me.  John was the sinner, not Jesus.  That was the point John made with no uncertain terms.  Jesus said, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.”

Jesus didn’t say, Suffer it to be so now, to enjoy myself or have fun or make money.  It was about doing right.  Jesus wasn’t held hostage to doing right.  He wanted to do right.  What does someone really get out of doing right?  The value in doing right is the value of doing right.  The value is greater than anything else, but it must be seen as greater.  We know it is greater, because Jesus said it was.

Jesus did everything right.  Through the imputation of justification, we receive the righteousness He lived by faith.  Doing right for Jesus was doing everything His Father wanted Him to do, so at His baptism in Matthew 3, the Father said in one of the rare occasions He spoke out loud for everyone to hear, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

“Suffer it to be so now” were the first recorded words of Jesus in scripture since what He said as a twelve year old in Luke 2, which was similar:  “I must be about my Father’s business.”  “Business” is supplied in the English.  Jesus must be about His Father’s.  Whatever His Father’s, but surely His Father’s.  That was the Son.  Then in essence, I want to do right, which we know was what the Father told Him to do.  Then the Father validated it with, Son, I am well pleased with you.  Of course, none of what the Father wanted the Son to do was sin.  It was all right.

Going back to the point of my second paragraph, the value of doing right is greater than anything.  Why?  God created everything and sustains everything, and God the Father wants righteousness.  He rewards righteousness in numbers of different ways all over scripture.  The world rewards, but it’s all temporal and in the end, it isn’t even reward, but punishment.

We turn the page to Matthew 4 and the Son is tested to the greatest extent by the greatest tempter, Satan himself.  The first Adam failed at the first temptation in the Garden of Eden by Satan.  The Father had commanded His son in Genesis 2.  That son did what he wanted.  He didn’t do right.  He failed that test.  God’s son, Adam, didn’t trust Him, so He didn’t see the greater value of obedience. He convinced himself that he was justified in his disobedience.  That was a son who had every tree of the garden, which he could freely eat, much like the prodigal son, who lived in his Father’s house in that parable of Jesus.

The Second Adam, Jesus, abode in a wilderness.  He fasted forty days and forty nights.  He was hungry.   Those were His conditions.  Then He was tempted.

The temptation started with Satan exalting the Son’s position, “if thou be the Son of God.”  Of course, He was the Son of God.  Wasn’t the Son entitled to certain benefits as the Son?  He was the Son of God.  He could do what He wanted to do.  Jesus didn’t assert His position or office as the Son.  Satan tempted Him to do that.  Jesus’ job as a Son was to do what His Father wanted Him to do.

The temptation, one might say, is turning stones to bread.  The temptation was asserting His own will ahead of His Father’s.  Life did not reduce down to physical needs.  It did reduce down to obeying the plan of the Father, staying in tune with what He wanted.

The Son quotes Deuteronomy 8:3.  Even the Son would obey God’s Word.  That was again, doing right.  In the original context of the quote, Israel, which was also God’s son, also in a sense of the representative son, Israel seed of Abraham but Jesus the seed of Abraham.  Israel didn’t live by bread, but the Word of God.  Jesus had fasted forty days and forty nights.  No one could live like that unless He was kept alive by something beyond the natural.  People live by the Word of God.

There is the Latin, fiat, used with Divine fiat.  It refers to God’s creation by spoken word or by divine order, let there be light.  Jesus said to Lazarus, come forth.  Man lives because of the Word of God, not because he is doing all that it takes to live — eating, drinking, exercising.  The Son didn’t need bread to live.  He had the Word of God.  Israel didn’t need bread to live.  She had the Word of God.

When Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor, this was an admission that Jesus was God.  Jesus had all riches.  If the rich young ruler had needs, Jesus could meet those. The rich young ruler could live by the Word of God, just like Jesus lived by the Word of God.  That was too hard for the rich young ruler.  He couldn’t see the value.

The Father was pleased by the obedience of the Son.  Nothing was wrong with eating bread.  It wasn’t a sin.  However, it would be outside of the will of the Father.  Jesus never operated outside of the will of the Father.  He wouldn’t turn the stones into bread, even in order to live.  He would continue in hunger.

Life is not about having your own way.  It’s not about independence.  It’s not about being on your own.  No doubt, if a father wanted just arbitrary obedience to unbiblical instruction, that’s not good. Both the Father and the Son authored truth.  But if a son’s focus is the will of the true Father, the actual Father, and even beyond sins of commission, where the son doesn’t do something he’s not supposed to do, he does what the father wants.  Jesus could have eaten bread, but it was more important to do what the Father wanted.

The obedience of the Son to the Father is a model of obedience of the son to the father.  It’s of greater value than satisfaction of short term gratification of physical needs, even if it is as something seemingly permissible, like eating bread.  I don’t think that’s usually the issue though.  It’s both doing what the father doesn’t want and then also not doing what the father does want — both.  Short term gratification of physical needs becomes the priority.  If the father gets in the way, he’s in trouble.

The comparison in the gospels to Matthew 4 was when Peter told Jesus that on Peter’s watch, Jesus wouldn’t suffer and die.  Jesus said, Get thee behind me, Satan.  Peter was tempting Jesus, like Satan had in the wilderness.  The will of the Father was for Jesus to die.  Peter instead wanted Jesus to meet short term physical needs.

Look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.