Survivor: The Wilderness

Matthew 4

40 days is a long time on anybody’s calendar. I wonder what crossed His mind when the Holy Spirit prompted Jesus to go into the wilderness. I am sure it was not a spontaneous, “I think I’ll go to the wilderness for, I dunno, 40 days and eat nothing while there.” It’s not like it was “Survivor: The Wilderness” or an idea for a really cheap vacation.

When the Holy Spirit brought this to His mind, what was His reaction. The most obvious reaction is that He went. But did He know He would be gone that long? Did He know He was not to pack a cooler?

What there an overwhelming urge to go sit on some rocks and contemplate God? Was there an irresistible compulsion to go out of town for the purpose of seeing how much temptation one could endure?

I cannot help but think of the level of awe and reverence some African tribes have for God. Their summations can help inform our theology: some see God as so transcendent, so far above and beyond, so “out there”, that He gave the stars just to point our eyes in His direction and realize we would never comprehend just where He is.

Then there is the balancing view of God’s immanence--His nearness. There is nowhere to turn without meeting Him. Many tribes understand His immanence as “bad” or “horrifying.” They would say that if you were alone in a deserted place and were met with an overwhelming sense of dread and terror, that you were in the presence of God.

What did Jesus feel out there?

Did Jesus tell someone where He would be and for how long He would be gone and when He would return? Did Mary know? Did anyone know? The last anyone saw of Him was the river Jordan after He arrived from Galilee. The Spirit knew because God arranged the event. Satan knew because the purpose of Jesus’ going was for the purpose of being tempted.

We are not given a catalog of the event of those 40 days. We are only given three events at the end of His temptation. These three are not the only ones He endured, yet they were most significant. Apparently, this was supposed to be at a time of His extreme weakness, as signified by His growing hunger. How could a man go that long THEN become hungry? His passion was tremendous!

Here is an act of Spirit over mind and body. The Holy Spirit led Jesus to an out of the way place that He could wrestle and agonize over temptation in an out of the way place. I am bothered with the frequency of times I have set up situations that involved temptation and told myself in the depths of my mind that I would pass or fail, depending on what I wanted to get out of it. There was really no fight. But for Jesus there was. His purpose was not to see how close He could get to failure so He could say how bad it was to finally “endure.” He entered the temptation armed with nothing but the Holy Spirit in His mind and body. How awesome to consider the mental and spiritual gymnastics that occurred in those days---constantly confronting and addressing thoughts and behaviors and attitudes and bad theology BEFORE they manifested into sin.

Here is the ancient question: was Jesus able not to sin, or not able to sin? He was perfect; therefore, not able to sin. What He has given us the is ability to not sin. The freedom we have in Christ is not freedom from sin but the freedom to not sin. But that’s another blog.

I am certain that Jesus did not merely sit on a rock with His hands folded, watching the sun, moon and stars in their courses above.

The story is told that after a large bridge had been constructed over which trains would run, the engineer of the bridge had a long train of supplied test the bridge. When the train got out onto the bridge, he ordered the engineer to stop the train, and stay there on the bridge all day. Why? Not to see if the bridge would collapse, but to prove that the bridge would not collapse.

Jesus was not tempted to see if He could cut it as the Son of God, or if this incarnation thing would work out. He did not spend all that time to see how perfect would hold out in the presence of sin. He did not go out there to see if the Holy Spirit would fail. He went out there to demonstrate His Sonship, the efficiency of the incarnation and how the Holy Spirit works.

Jesus went under the leadership and in the power of the Holy Spirit to prove God’s faithfulness, to prove that the mind, body and spirit would survive an onslaught of Satanism when plugged into the Holy Spirit and come out to the praise and glory of God.

C.H. Spurgeon said, “When Satan tempts us, his sparks fall upon tinder; but in Christ’s case, it was liking striking sparks on water; yet the enemy continued his evil work. Now if the devil goes on striking when there is no result, how much more will he do it when he knows what inflammable stuff our hearts are made of.”

I wish I could remember the source of the quote so I could say it rightly, but someone once said to the effect: “better to fear the flames of heaven than the fires of hell.”

Solitude and retreat do not guarantee serenity and warm fuzzy spirituality. Instead these are an invitation for the devil to follow. Why? That we may test where we are on the lust of the eye and the pride of life scale. Did Jesus need to check where He was no the scale? No, He was calibrating it.

The King of Tribes has spoken!