A Remarkable Siege in the Wilderness

“And immediately [after Jesus’ baptism by John] the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.” Mark 1.12. Also see: Mat. 4.1; Luke 4.1.

Jesus was headed to His hour of temptation. This is a very interesting remark: “driveth him into the wilderness.” The stark necessity for such an ordeal was a lash applied to His spirit; it was an ox goad keeping Him from deviating from the strait, narrow path ordained for Him. Is it possible that the man in Jesus’ nature did not want to go through the coming wilderness ordeal and that the Spirit of God in Him compelled Him (Jesus) to go against Jesus’ own natural will? It seems likely that, as a man (although not a rebellious man as we are by nature), Jesus would naturally want to avoid suffering.  Disliking the difficulty of the Way is not rebellion or disobedience; it is only being human. There is no doubt that His human nature recoiled from the forty days of rigorous testing that lay ahead of Him. But His will, as man or God, was now and always to do the Father’s will. (Heb. 10:7)

Testing, temptation: these words indicate stress, even suffering; and without them Jesus could not have been our near kinsman. The wilderness was no more a place of relaxation than Gethsemane or Calvary, each of which would soon cast its fearsome shadow across Jesus’ appointed pathway. It is true that Jesus did mentally recoil from the “moment of truth” blocking His pathway, but within Himself He would not and could not go any other way.

There was a reason for the use of the phrase, “driveth him into the wilderness.” Jesus had now, before the world’s sins were summarily laid upon Him, assumed the world as His burden. He knew that He had to endure the rigors of the desert ordeal as part of that burden.

There are times when the dedicated man of God has to go through the fire for a purpose. The higher the purpose the more he is determined, in spite of inborn aversion to inconvenience and distress, to enter the flame. When there is no other way for the man of great commitment to achieve a lofty goal for which he avidly yearns, he steels himself for the worst. He resolves in himself not to be denied his necessary pain. A person of this spiritual caliber is driven (not against his will) by the necessity that the Spirit lays upon him to accomplish God’s sovereign will. Thus it was with Jesus. He was led by the Spirit and He was driven by the urgency that the same Spirit impressed upon Him to push boldly into His distasteful mission.

This was one of the painful climactic hours that He dreaded but to which He had to commit Himself. Jesus was now caught in a hellishly trying vortex of continuous temptation for forty days. We tend to focus on His last three temptations because only they are detailed in the Bible, but they were just a summing up of all that had gone on before. During the forty days Jesus was tried in every conceivable way, not just in the general class of temptations that are reflected in the last three temptations, (Lust of the Flesh, Lust of the Eye, and Pride of Life). He was assaulted by every low, vile and despicable allurement to sin that we can know.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15)

Jesus was tried in a “genteel” manner; He was assaulted fiercely in an all-out show of Satanic force. Satan attacked Jesus in direct ways and he approached Him in insidious, indirect fashion. Billows of longing washed over His Being at times; and anger and greed assailed Him. Hatred attempted to force its way into His heart. Jesus ran the gamut of temptations, “yet without sin” …Yet without sin.

Three Final Temptations and Total Victory

When the forty days of testing were drawing to a close, Jesus was weakened physically and drained spiritually. Satan thought to finish Him off. It is significant that the last three temptations represent all the testing that can come upon man. They do not comprise every individual test; they merely embrace the three broad categories of tests that man can experience. According to 1 John 2:16 they are:  1) the Lust of the Flesh; 2) the Lust of the Eyes; and 3) the Pride of Life. We shall look at them closely below:

1.       Lust of the Flesh

In this type of temptation Satan is striking at Jesus through one of the body’s natural and normally harmless appetites. It is notable, however, that throughout His earthly life Jesus deliberately refrained from using His miraculous powers for satisfying His personal bodily needs. Satan realized this inhibition and sought to cause Jesus to override it in His extreme hunger. Satan was also appealing to the pride that was at this time trying to gnaw its way into the consciousness of Jesus.

“IF,” Satan says as though not convinced, “if you really are the Son of God…” Prove that you are the Son of God because I don’t believe it. Satan’s approach through the distressful hunger Jesus was enduring was to be expected. He will strike at any chink or opening that he thinks he sees in the Christian’s armor; so how much more eagerly would he attack the Son of God when given the chance!

“It is written,” Jesus turned Satan off simply, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The body and its appetites may seem all?impor­tant, but they are always to be subordinate to the will of God.

2.       Pride of Life

Satan was not impressed. He whisked Jesus away to one of the highest places in the Temple, looking down on the courts below.  As Jesus stood there with the tempter at His elbow, the tempter threw the implied doubt in Jesus’ face again.

“If indeed you are the Son of God,” and Satan was saying that there was as yet no proof of it, “cast yourself down before the people in the court below.”

Then Satan actually quoted Scripture:

“It is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” (Psa. 91:11,12)

Jesus knew that in this instance Satan spoke truth. It would have been a master stroke to have thrown Himself down from the dizzying heights in the sight of all the horrified onlookers who were at the moment milling around, unaware of what was occurring high overhead. Suddenly angels would catch Him in His headlong plunge and deposit Him safely on the ground. Jesus would have caught the imagination of all the people by such a coup.

But Jesus countered Satan’s thrust with another scripture that put the scripture Satan had quoted in proper perspective. “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt [try] the Lord thy God.” (Deut. 6:16) In other words, you shall not put God to the test for any vain or unworthy purpose.

3.       Lust of the Eye

Still undaunted, Satan took Jesus to the top of a very high mountain. From that vantage point he gave Jesus a panoramic view of the nations of the world and all their glory. This would be tempting to Jesus as a man who certainly wanted to make His mark on the people, although not in an unworthy manner.

Satan pressed his case: “I’ll give you all this if you will fall down and worship me.”

This may seem to have been a transparent test to one who was divine, but bear in mind that this was Jesus’ hour of testing and He was, for this period, subject to every trying situation and temptation that we now endure. Certainly everything with which Satan could lure and test Him was illogical and easily coped with by the divinity within Jesus, but for this moment this divine/human man was human and vulnerable. For this hour He was capable of being tempted. Thus it became him to fulfill all righteousness.

Satan’s latest offer was enticing to Jesus just as the others had been, but He rejected it out of hand. “Begone!” Jesus commanded. “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Satan had now been ordered to leave; and he lost no time in doing so. However, it is notable that Jesus did not rid Himself of His adversary until His time of testing was finished. Jesus could have sent Satan fleeing at any time, but He allowed him to work his will with Him (Jesus) so that Jesus’ own righteous purpose could be served.

So it is with the believer in Christ in the believer’s hour of temptation. There is a righteous purpose that God wants worked out in and/or through him and the believer should fortify himself with that knowledge.

After Satan’s flight from the arena of testing, we can well imagine that Jesus was left lying, spent and motionless, on the ground in the wilderness. The forty unsparing days had taken their toll, and “angels came and ministered unto him.” He had been beset by a continuing series of tests that was unique in the history of mankind. But He had not committed one sin; He had not failed in the least.