Communion With the Christ:: The Season of Lent: Victory In The Wilderness

"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness

to be tempted by the devil" Matt:4:1

Our Lord Jesus after passing through the Waters of baptism is led by the Holy Spirit into the the Wilderness of Judea and there faces satan.

We read In St. Matthew’s account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.

John the Baptist had come out of the wilderness, declaring the baptism of repentance and the coming of the Kingdom of God.

John did this to prepare the way for Jesus' public ministry.

When Jesus is baptized , and pointed out by John as "the lamb that takes away the sin of the world"

John's ministry was completed : Now, the very one Who Israel had long hoped for was here ; the Messiah.

"he that should come." Matt:11.3

Here was the Messiah of Israel, identified by the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove Who descended upon Jesus , and the words of the Father , confirming that Jesus is His Son upon whom the pleasure of God rest and in whom all the Holy Trinity is in view.

"this is my beloved Son." Matt: 3.17

The Messiah

Here , the very Messiah had arrived bringing in His own person the very Kingdom of God. This is the One Whom the prophets of Israel had spoken of, He had come, the hope of Israel and all humanity . The anticipation hopes and expectations. The years of waiting, all came to focus upon Jesus .

Into The Wilderness

"Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Matt:4:1

Jesus' first actions not to go to Jerusalem and the Temple , which was the center of Israel's relationship with their God, but rather ,Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit to go to the Judean Wilderness. A harsh dry windswept place.

In Hebrew cosmology, that is how they understood the world, this was a place where demonic powers were thought to inhabit. It is such a place that Jesus is powerfully led to go, it is as if Jesus is declaring that He will face Satan in his own territory.

In this wilderness, we witness, through the Scriptures, the Kingdom of God embodied by Jesus Christ , demonstrating what was and is and always will be true, that the Great God is God alone .There is , in truth, just one victory, and this victory is manifest throughout all time and eternity. God is God and God's will will be done.

In the barren desert wilderness , the conflict becomes an open one: Satan comes to Jesus, and in the temptations of Jesus, the subtle nature and forms of that conflict are seen.

The Temptations

First, Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread. Satan attempts to goad Jesus into employing the power of God for carnal worldly ends, to satisfy the demands of the flesh. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about hunger and wanting to eat, but the temptation lies in gratification of the flesh , the real temptation is not being hungry, but vanity.

Satan uses a very clever temptation(s) to entice Jesus, and us. Remember this; there is a difference between being clever and being wise. Satan is clever but he is not wise.

"If you are the Son of God, command theses stones to become bread" Matt:4:3

All the temptation(s) that Jesus is confronted with in the Wilderness, each of them are drawn out of the very history and experience of the people of Israel and each of us.

Israel as a nation, in their journey in the Wilderness, was tempted in each of these ways , which we see Jesus being tempted, yet, we see Jesus doing what Israel did not do. Where Israel succumbed to the temptations ; Jesus did not. Jesus is the true Israel of God.

The Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking; so it does not consist in devices to make the flesh more comfortable. Jesus answers from Deut: 8:2-3,

"Man does not live by bread alone, but by the whole Word of God." Matt: 4:4

The second temptation , satan takes our Lord Jesus to the pinnacle of Temple itself in Jerusalem which over looked the Kidron Valley 300 feet below. This is the place where a trumpet was blown to call the people to worship. Satan ,here, attempts to create a "religious spectral" .

He attempts to create the impression in Jesus' mind that all Jesus need do is jump and the intervening angels would prevent His death. The sight would certainty causes Jesus to be acknowledged as the Messiah. Jesus could avoid the cross. All Jesus need do is fly and He would not have to die. The "spectral" would be the evidence of Jesus' Messiahship

"If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down." Matt: 4:5

It is the temptation to use the divine power, to uses the God's spirit according to one's own desire. It is the temptation to have God under our control for human reasons. But the Kingdom has nothing to do with using God for human purposes. The miracles of the Kingdom of God have another purpose . Jesus again , uses the word of God in the face of the temptation, are found in Psalm: 91:

"Thou shall not test the Lord thy God." Matt: 4:7

The third temptation is very fundamental, and it is the foundation of all others. It is the temptation of Adam: "to be as God." It is the temptation to see one's "self" in the place of God, to be oneself the absolute measure of everything.

The Self As "god"

That is the worship of the devil. "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." It is, an illusion, a futile pride and ambition, because it is untrue to the absolute reality of God. and His order of creation. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

"See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand." Duet:32:39

What satan was attempting to do was to have Jesus to step outside the will of God, to circumvent the Father's purpose. Satan appealed to Jesus' desire to do good. Again Jesus could fulfill God's purpose and avoid the cross, He could preserve himself. To which Jesus again refused. Jesus would fulfill the will of God as His Father purposed.

"Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor all this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me" Matt:4:8-9.

Jesus' answer strikes at the very heart of theses and all temptation.

"away from Me ,Satan!For it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only"(10)

"Then the devil left him." (11a)

This demonstrates what we see in James:4:7

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

The temptations were to use God for worldly ends, and the temptation to regard one's self as God.

"And behold, angels came and ministered unto him." (11b)

Jesus' Victory

With the temptations ended, Jesus now is ready to carry out His mission.

The angelic assistance Jesus receives here, is His right, it is not just a statement of his need but it speaks to us about Who He is . The angels, serve Him because He is the Son of God.

The temptations of Jesus represent the basic forms of all temptation; they are ours temptations not just Jesus' and the temptations of all Christians.

They represent the voice of the carnal nature, to exult our own will over that of God's . That we can use God for our ends, that we can make God subject to our whims and wants, that we can be as absolute as God.

What we see here in the wilderness temptations of our Lord, is not Jesus, earning the right and there by becoming the Messiah. But rather , Jesus is not the Messiah because He defeated Satan, but rather He defeated satan because He is the Messiah.

Jesus is God from all eternity. Satan was not here defeated, but in truth has always been defeated, this encounter in the wilderness only shows us what has always been true. God is God and there can be no other. There could be no other out come, this is the victory that always has been that God is God.

This one eternal victory has been manifested throughout the history of salvation. From eternity past to the freeing of the people of Israel from the slave pits of Egypt and the Red Sea Crossing, the conquest of the Promised Land to David defeating Goliath. To the Birth of Jesus and His Resurrection from the Grave, all theses declare that God is God. Victory is not just what Jesus achieved, but Victory is who Jesus is.

The victory of Jesus is ours' to share in , not because of anything we have done but it is all due to Who He is.

"But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" 1Cor:15:57

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us"Rom:8:37

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives to the death." Reve: 12:11

The Season in Wilderness

In this season of the year we are led up by the Spirit into the wilderness with our Lord through the pages of the Scripture so that we can see Jesus showing himself to be the very One whom Israel longed for. Jesus also shows us that we can call on His Word to ward off the temptations that come our way in life.

In this season of the year we need to take time and consider are we allowing ourselves to be led to step outside of the will of God in any area of our lives. Are we giving in to the carnal nature that we all have?

God will at times lead us by the Holy Spirit into a personal Wilderness, where we are tempted, tested, not so God finds out what we will do, but rather , so that we find out what we will do.

At times we can shield ourselves from the truth; we need to face the temptations, for they reveal the truth about our humanity. Jesus faced them and what was raveled was that He is the Lord.

A wilderness is necessary for the clarifying of the Holy Spirit to minister to us in .Recall the Scripture show that Jesus was led into the wilderness to His face temptations. The Holy Spirit will in our own wilderness show us the truth.

In the ancient Church there were hermits, called the "Desert Fathers," ,they had a point when they claimed that the real battles of the spirit, the real confrontations with our devils, take place in quiet and isolation of our personal wilderness.

This Season of the year calls each and all of us to participate, at least in some way, in that journey into the Wilderness, so we might see ourselves clearly in the light of God's Word, to identify our illusions so that we might be free of them all because of Who Jesus is and the victory that is His and His alone from all eternity, this is His victory that He offers each of us.

Benediction: May We Each and All Give Glory to Our Lord Jesus Christ Whose Victory We Share, Today, Tomorrow and Forevermore. Amen.