Dan Kopp, lead pastor of The Eastside Vineyard Church in Michigan gave an outstanding message on Matthew 4:1-11 when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil. Jesus answers the devil with scripture. Dan poses the question, did Jesus answer with scripture because He is God and inspired the Bible to be written or did it have everything to do with the fact He was a Jew?
Dan continues to explain that Jewish children memorize the first 5 books of the Old Testament beginning at the age of 5. And Jesus, being a Jew, memorizes the scriptures as a young boy. That in fact, being fully MAN, he has to learn and do things just as His peers did. Jesus, although fully GOD, chose to function as a human being, living His life on earth completely dependent on the Holy Spirit just as you and I. So that when he is a young boy memorizing Deutoronomy, He is being prepared at a young age for this very moment in Matthew 4 as a 33 year old man in the wilderness. He is prepared to fire back truth to the devil. His bible memorization became His tool of defense - Wielding the word of God like a Sword!
Further, Dan explains that Jewish Rabbis were know to take honey and put it on the figners of these 5-year old children and have them taste it. Then the Rabbi would say that Scripture is Sweeter so they would associate God's word in a positive way and be encouraged to memorize it. Psalm 119:97, 103 Oh how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long... How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
The more we memorize scripture and meditate on His word, we too, will be like Jesus and the Holy Spirit will bring to mind what we need and when we need to fight back and wield the word of God and speak truth to our enemy and to each other and to ourselves.
What Scripture are you memorizing? Just reply to this post with the verses you are memorizing and meditating on this week.
I'm memorizing Jeremiah 17:7-8
"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him. He will be planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
To listen to Dan Kopp's message follow this link http://www.tevchurch.org/node/35
or go to http://www.tevchurch.org/. Go to Teaching and Resources tab to 20110501 Sweeter than Honey
