The Two “Take and Eat’s” of the Bible

Satan’s “Take and Eat:”

Genesis 3:4-5: But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Jesus’ “Take and Eat:”

Matthew 26:26: Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

Commenting on Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve and Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, Ligon Dunan said:

Do you know what Derek Kidner ways about that verse?  He says, “So simple an act, so hard its undoing.  God will taste poverty and death before ‘Take and eat’ become verbs of salvation.”  And do you see what Satan is doing here in the wilderness to Jesus?  “Jesus, take!  Eat!  You need that bread!  Your Father’s not provided it for You.  He’s not good.  He’s not worth living for and dying for, because He’s not loving and He’s not generous and He’s not good.”

Do you understand, my friends, that every time we face the temptation to sin that is the temptation that we’re playing out over again?  Every time you look to take something that’s not yours, you’re saying that God hasn’t provided me what I need so I’m going to take it for myself.  Every time you’re tempted to take someone who is not yours, you’re saying God hasn’t provided me with the someone that I need, and so I’m going to take what I need.  You are playing out again the lie of the evil one who says that God is not good and that He doesn’t give what we need.

And here’s Jesus, and Jesus’ response to Satan is this:  “I don’t live by bread alone.  I live by every word that proceeds from My Father’s mouth.”  And so Jesus resists the temptation of Satan – “Take and eat that bread, Jesus!  Take and eat that bread, Adam and Eve, because God’s not going to provide for you.  He’s not good.”  And Jesus says, “No.  I live by the words of My Father’s mouth.  I will not take and eat.”

But then Jesus turns to His people and He says, “Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you.  God has provided for you, My people, everything that you need, and it’s Me.  So here; take and eat freely, because your Father has in the goodness of His heart given you the most precious thing in this world.  Can you doubt His goodness and love?  He has given you Me.”  Jesus turns those words of temptation into words of salvation by His perfect obedience, by His resistance to temptation and by His dying the death on the cross in our place.

Oh, my friends!  When the temptation comes to you to take what Satan says that you need when it is what God says that you must not take, remember your Savior and live in the second Adam, not in the first.  And so be found raised to newness of life in the second Adam, instead of condemned to death in the first.

(http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/sermons/Luke/08a_Luke_4_1-13_Tempted_Tried_But_Never_Failing.htm)