LUKE 4:1–13
The wilderness of the desert. Parched ground. Sharp rocks. Shifting sand. Burning sun. Thorns that cut. A miraging oasis. Wavy horizons ever beyond reach. This is the wilderness of the desert.
The wilderness of the soul. Parched promises. Sharp words. Shifting commitments. Burning anger. Rejections that cut. Miraging hope. Distant solutions ever beyond reach. This is the wilderness of the soul.
Some of you know the first. All of you know the second. Jesus, however, knew both.
With skin still moist with Jordan water, he turned away from food and friends and entered the country of hyenas, lizards, and vultures. He was “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry” (Luke 4:1–2).
The wilderness was not a typical time for Jesus. Normalcy was left at the Jordan and would be rediscovered in Galilee. The wilderness was and is atypical. A dark parenthesis in the story of life. A fierce season of face-to-face encounters with the devil.
You needn’t journey to Israel to experience the wilderness. A cemetery will do just fine. So will a hospital. Grief can lead you into the desert. So can divorce or debt or depression.
Received word this morning of a friend who, thinking he was cancer-free, is going back for chemotherapy. Wilderness. Ran into a fellow at lunch who once talked to me about his tough marriage. Asked him how it was going. He shrugged. “It’s going.” Wilderness. Opened an e-mail from an acquaintance who is spending her summer at the house of her dying mother. She and hospice and death. Waiting. In the wilderness.
You can often chalk up wilderness wanderings to transition. Jesus entered the Jordan River a carpenter and exited a Messiah. His baptism flipped a breaker switch.
Been through any transitions lately? A transfer? Job promotion? Job demotion? A new house? If so, be wary. The wilderness might be near.
How do you know when you’re in one?
You are lonely. Whether in fact or in feeling, no one can help, understand, or rescue you.
And your struggle seems endless. In the Bible the number forty is associated with lengthy battles. Noah faced rain for forty days. Moses faced the desert for forty years. Jesus faced temptation for forty nights. Please note, he didn’t face temptation for one day out of forty. Jesus was “in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil” (vv. 1–2). The battle wasn’t limited to three questions. Jesus spent a month and ten days slugging it out with Satan. The wilderness is a long, lonely winter.
Doctor after doctor. Résumé after résumé. Diaper after diaper. Zoloft after Zoloft. Heartache after heartache. The calendar is stuck in February, and you’re stuck in South Dakota, and you can’t even remember what spring smells like.
One more symptom of the badlands: You think the unthinkable. Jesus did. Wild possibilities crossed his mind. Teaming up with Satan? Opting to be a dictator and not a Savior? Torching Earth and starting over on Pluto? We don’t know what he thought. We just know this. He was tempted. And “one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust” (James 1:14). Temptation “carries” you and “entices” you. What was unimaginable prior to the wilderness becomes possible in it. A tough marriage can make a good man look twice at the wrong woman. Extended sickness makes even the stoutest soul consider suicide. Stress makes the smokiest nightclub smell sweet. The wilderness weakens resolve.
For that reason, the wilderness is the maternity ward for addictions. Binge eating, budget-busting gambling, excessive drinking, pornography—all short-term solutions to deep-seated problems. Typically they have no appeal, but in the wilderness you give thought to the unthinkable.
Jesus did. Jesus was “tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:2). Satan’s words, if for but a moment, gave him pause. He may not have eaten the bread, but he stopped long enough in front of the bakery to smell it. Christ knows the wilderness. More than you might imagine. After all, going there was his idea.
Don’t blame this episode on Satan. He didn’t come to the desert looking for Jesus. Jesus went to the badlands looking for him. “The Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1 NCV, emphasis mine). Heaven orchestrated this date. How do we explain this? The list of surprising places grows again. If Jesus in the womb and the Jordan waters doesn’t stun you, Jesus in the wilderness will. Why did Jesus go to the desert?
Does the word rematch mean anything to you? For the second time in history an unfallen mind will be challenged by the fallen angel. The Second Adam has come to succeed where the first Adam failed. Jesus, however, faces a test far more severe. Adam was tested in a garden; Christ is in a stark wasteland. Adam faced Satan on a full stomach; Christ is in the midst of a fast. Adam had a companion: Eve. Christ has no one. Adam was challenged to remain sinless in a sinless world. Christ, on the other hand, is challenged to remain sinless in a sin-ridden world.
Stripped of any aid or excuses, Christ dares the devil to climb into the ring. “You’ve been haunting my children since the beginning. See what you can do with me.” And Satan does. For forty days the two go toe-to-toe. The Son of heaven is tempted but never wavers, struck but never struck down. He succeeds where Adam failed. This victory, according to Paul, is a huge victory for us all. “Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it” (Rom. 5:18 MSG).
Christ continues his role as your proxy, your stand-in, your substitute. He did for you what my friend Bobby Aycock did for David. The two were in boot camp in 1959. David was a very likable, yet physically disadvantaged soldier. He had the desire but not the strength. There was simply no way he would pass the fitness test. Too weak for the pull-ups.
But Bobby had such a fondness for David that he came up with a plan. He donned his friend’s T-shirt. The shirt bore David’s last name, two initials, and service serial number. The superiors didn’t know faces; they just read the names and numbers off the shirts and marked scores on a list of names. So Bobby did David’s pull-ups. David came out looking pretty good and never even broke a sweat.
Neither did you. Listen, you and I are no match for Satan. Jesus knows this. So he donned our jersey. Better still, he put on our flesh. He was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15 NIV). And because he did, we pass with flying colors.
God gives you Jesus’ wilderness grade. Believe that. If you don’t, the desert days will give you a one-two punch. The right hook is the struggle. The left jab is the shame for not prevailing against it. Trust his work.
And trust his Word. Don’t trust your emotions. Don’t trust your opinions. Don’t even trust your friends. In the wilderness heed only the voice of God.
Again, Jesus is our model. Remember how Satan teased him? “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Luke 4:3, 9 NCV). Why would Satan say this? Because he knew what Christ had heard at the baptism. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17).
“Are you really God’s Son?” Satan is asking. Then comes the dare—“Prove it!” Prove it by doing something:
“Tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3).
“If You worship before me, it shall all be Yours” (v. 7).
“Throw Yourself down from here” (v. 9).
What subtle seduction! Satan doesn’t denounce God; he simply raises doubts about God. Is his work enough? Earthly works—like bread changing or temple jumping—are given equal billing with heavenly works. He attempts to shift, ever so gradually, our source of confidence away from God’s promise and toward our performance.
Jesus doesn’t bite the bait. No heavenly sign is requested. He doesn’t solicit a lightning bolt; he simply quotes the Bible. Three temptations. Three declarations.
“It is written . . .” (v. 4 NCV).
“It is written . . .” (v. 8 NCV).
“It is said . . .” (v. 12).
Jesus’ survival weapon of choice is Scripture. If the Bible was enough for his wilderness, shouldn’t it be enough for ours? Don’t miss the point here. Everything you and I need for desert survival is in the Book. We simply need to heed it.
On a trip to the United Kingdom, our family visited a castle. In the center of the garden sat a maze. Row after row of shoulder-high hedges, leading to one dead end after another. Successfully navigate the labyrinth, and discover the door to a tall tower in the center of the garden. Were you to look at our family pictures of the trip, you’d see four of our five family members standing on the top of the tower. Hmmm, someone is still on the ground. Guess who? I was stuck in the foliage. I just couldn’t figure out which way to go.
Ah, but then I heard a voice from above. “Hey, Dad.” I looked up to see Sara, peering through the turret at the top. “You’re going the wrong way,” she explained. “Back up and turn right.”
Do you think I trusted her? I didn’t have to. I could have trusted my own instincts, consulted other confused tourists, sat and pouted and wondered why God would let this happen to me. But do you know what I did? I listened. Her vantage point was better than mine. She was above the maze. She could see what I couldn’t.
Don’t you think we should do the same with God? “God is . . . higher than the heavens” (Job 22:12 TLB). “The LORD is high above all nations” (Ps. 113:4). Can he not see what eludes us? Doesn’t he want to get us out and bring us home? Then we should do what Jesus did.
Rely on Scripture. Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs. Jesus told Satan, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The verb proceeds is literally “pouring out.” Its tense suggests that God is constantly and aggressively communicating with the world through his Word. God is speaking still!
Hang in there. Your time in the desert will pass. Jesus’ did. “The devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him” (Matt. 4:11).
Till angels come to you:
Trust his Word. Just like me in the maze, you need a voice to lead you out.
Trust his work. Like David at boot camp, you need a friend to take your place.
Thank God you have One who will.