THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them He was hungry.” Luke 4:1,2.

The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert where there was no supply of food or water. He did not have to enter a dialogue with Satan to engineer the testing. All He had to do was to set it up by moving Jesus into a place of solitude and extreme hunger and the devil would be there to do exactly what God wanted him to do.

What was the purpose of this test? To strip Jesus of every human provision He could rely on so that He would rely completely on God. It was the expression of God’s love – because God knew the bigger picture. It was Jesus’ first “Gethsemane” – being “pressed” by His physical surroundings to have no-one but God. He was exposed to extreme heat, cold, dangerous creatures, hazardous terrain, and inward testing by the devil. He had to KNOW that God was with Him before He could announce it to the world.

Since the devil is not omnipresent and since Jesus was his chief prize, was he lurking somewhere when Jesus was baptised? Did he hear the voice of God and see the Spirit descend on Jesus? Did he follow Him into the wilderness and hover nearby, waiting for Jesus to be sapped of His physical strength through His prolonged fast? It was quite within his character to hit Jesus when He was down. How prepared was Jesus for this moment? Did He know that Satan was there all the time?

Most of Jesus’ tests came through people, as they come to us as human beings, but this one was a frontal attack – a contest between the kings of darkness and light. This battle was to set the rules of the game from here on. Satan was trying to lure Jesus into taking him on by sheer supernatural power. Why? If he could get Jesus, as representative man, to take him on as God, using divine power to overcome him, it would be declared an unfair contest and Jesus would be disqualified from representing human beings. Satan’s accusation that God is unjust would have been upheld.

This was not a test of will power but of trust. Temptation did not build trust – it tested the trust already built up over 30 years of soaking in the Word of God.

These tests resembled Satan’s modus operandi in the Garden of Eden. Adam fell for the first one – Satan didn’t have to go any further. Failure to trust affects our faith, our family, and our future. Falling for Satan’s lies brings consequences that are far wider than ourselves; they affect all of those who are closest to us, and repercussions that affect our future and future of those we love.