Tested and Tried

Matthew 4:1-2. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights,He was afterward an hungered.”

Perhaps our first response to this verse is, “But WHY?  Why does Jesus have to go through this experience?  Why should He be subjected to the lying and conniving  of Satan?  I mean, He could blink and Satan would go up in a puff of smoke!”

Of course I don’t know the complete answer to such a question, but one thing comes immediately to mind.  Hebrews 4:15. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One Who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.”  Also,  I Corinthians 10:15 says, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

Jesus was the God-Man, God incarnate, come in the flesh to walk this earth the same way all mankind has done and will do until He returns.  He was sinless because He was God; He was subject to temptation because He was man.

In Mark 1:12, we are told that immediately after His baptism, the Spirit led Him to the wilderness.  There was no interval of time after He came up out of the water. He went immediately to this confrontation with His enemy of the ages.

We are also told that He was, literally translated, carried or driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus, the Second Adam, was taken to a place much different than the lush garden where Adam and Eve were tempted by this same evil serpent.  Jesus went, not to an abundant garden of delicious food, but to a barren place of very little food or water. Deuteronomy 8:15 describes that kind of wilderness as a place that is terrible, full of fiery serpents and scorpion, and thirsty ground where was no water. He was there in the wilderness with wild beasts (Mark 1:13).  Here in this desolate, lonely place, He prepares to meet Satan.

Satan, true to form, waited until forty days and nights had passed.  Jesus had been alone; He was hungry, thirsty, physically depleted and exhausted because He had the body of a man, and He was subject to all the temptations of a man. He must have lost weight; He must have been drawn and haggard-looking after such an ordeal in such unfriendly surroundings.

Tomorrow, we’ll see how Jesus dealt with Satan.