CHAPTER 10
JESUS—OUR BEST EXAMPLE
IN THE WILDERNESS
IF WE MODEL after Jesus, we will always be victorious to come through and go into the next season. Jesus moved through His wilderness stops. To do so, He had to resist forty straight days. Never before had the enemy’s tempting voice so bombarded anyone on Earth. All mankind hung in the balance over this forty-day confrontation and war in the wilderness.
The key to Yeshua’s victory was that He submitted. When He entered into the wilderness, He immediately submitted Himself to Father God. From submission He was able to resist the enemy.
We must submit in the midst of our testings. To submit means “to stand under.” To resist means “to stand against.” When we submit, we gain the power of what we are standing under. Then we can resist from that power and authority that are flowing from above into the very depth of our being. Our spirit man is filled by the spirit or Spirit to whom we are submitted. From the power and manifestation of that spirit, we resist. Jesus had entered the wilderness filled with the Spirit that had rested on Him when He submitted to be baptized by John the Baptist.
The moment we stop resisting, our spirit man is invaded with an atmosphere that leads to vexation. Satan will meet you on every front and use any tactic to take the deed that you have been given. The enemy’s goal is to make sure you fall short in your ability to prosper. Not only are we to multiply, but we are also to expand the boundaries of our land, both spiritually and physically.
Each phase of expansion in your life has a wilderness front. Most of us think, “If I can just make it through one wilderness, I’ve won the whole war.” Every phase of expansion has a wilderness front through which you must learn to war. You must always allow the Spirit of God to evaluate you in each of the phases.
JESUS TAUGHT US TRUE
HUMILITY IN THE WILDERNESS
The only way you can make it through the first stop on your path to destiny is to stay humble. Being humble does not mean you cower down to the enemy. To be humble means you rely upon someone other than yourself. You bend yourself over so you’re not exalting yourself above everyone else. You submit your thoughts. You lay down your own human reasoning and listen for instruction. To be a disciple, you must be teachable. You must never believe that you know it all, or you will become apathetic to change. To be humble means that you’re bending yourself over to get through a rocky, dry place with many dangers. In other words, if you stay low, your head will remain in a protected state so you can hear how to move. You will know when to go right or go left.
Anytime you are in a wilderness place, you must humble yourself until the word that will lead out comes forth. Revelation must meet you and lead you from destination to destination. All wilderness places have a release of the Word. When we embrace the exhortation or correction of the word we receive, we will experience victory and authority. That is a scriptural principle. The Word will come to you that will allow you to take possession of one wilderness place so you can move to the next and then the next until you have established your authority for the future.
REMEMBER THE PROPHETIC WORD
Always remember the prophetic Word while you move through the wilderness! John the Baptist transitioned his authority of one season over to the Messiah. The prophecy in Isaiah 40 defines this transition. A wilderness season was prophesied: “‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’ says your God. ‘Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended’” (Isa. 40:1–2). Many times prophecy states the end and the beginning. In this wilderness place, Isaiah prophesied:
“Her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;
The glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
The voice said, “Cry out!”
And he said, “What shall I cry?”
—ISAIAH 40:2–6
In your wilderness place, there is a prophecy working to bring God’s plan of fulfillment into your life and the earth in which we walk.
Now look at another portion of that prophecy in Isaiah. Read all the way from Isaiah 40 through Isaiah 62, and you will understand the full concept of what will happen in the seasons ahead to fulfill the plan of Father in the earth. Good news is coming! These portions of Scripture say that we will press through our wilderness to get to the manifestation of the good news.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
And they shall rebuild the old ruins.
—ISAIAH 61:1–4, EMPHASIS ADDED
REPENTANCE HAS THREE DIMENSIONS
Look for those who are going before you with a message of change. Don’t keep advancing through the wilderness without knowing why you’re in that wilderness and what is being tested. John was preaching a certain message. That’s why he’s called the Baptist. He was preaching repentance. To repent means “to change your mind.” If we change our mind, we can take new land.
Repentance has three dimensions. First, repentance takes an intellectual shift. Your brain has to shift. You have to say, “I believe this, but here is another paradigm that I’m having to choose.” You see the theory presented, and you have to make the choice that this is right. You understand in your intellect that what you have heard is a correct direction for your life. We must remember that “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7).
The next level of repentance comes when all of a sudden your emotions have to let go of some old issues that would keep you from really grabbing hold of this new paradigm. This is usually where a lot of people never repent. Our emotions stay tied to the past, tied to the way we operate, whom we operate with, and why we had problems in a previous situation. Without allowing the Lord to touch and change our emotions, we really do not fully repent. Our spirit will remain in angst and annoyed. We always live with a measure of emotion that prevents us from seeing our future clearly. You have to be healed in your emotions of the past to shift into your future.
The third component of repentance is that there has to be a will action. The will action produces the reality of your repentance. John the Baptist was drawing people to the wilderness. Their status and upbringing didn’t matter. Their wealth or poverty was not an issue. We find that publicans came out. Soldiers came out. The people had not forgotten that there was a Torah. Rather, they did not see a reality in the Torah; there was no reality in the operation of the Word. Most revivals take on this character of a wilderness-season repentance because we have gotten so far from the reality of the Word. We’re acknowledging the Word in a new way by saying, “O my God, how did we drift so far from it?”
JESUS IS BAPTIZED
John the Baptist baptized people so they would actually recognize the shift in their thought processes. Certain denominations, like the Baptist denomination, follow the same method. John the Baptist helped people shift their way of thinking and move in a certain way. This was a valid baptism, and there was nothing wrong with his message. But unless the people also moved forward from this baptism, they would remain in a wilderness way of spiritual life. Today many moves of God remain in this place—left in the wilderness with this baptism. You’re not out of the wilderness. You know you want to live a better life that has been presented to you. You want to have your conscience clean of the way you have been thinking and doing.
There’s nothing wrong with John’s baptism, and it is a wonderful method. People came by the droves to get into this form of change. Jesus Himself went there to get into and connect with that which paved the way for the next dimension that we must enter. Jesus went and got in this move. The only way we can be affirmed for the next move of Father is to connect with the last major move He was doing. The only way we will get to our next there is to come out to the wilderness, get dunked in what was, and then allow something new to happen.
When Jesus connected and was baptized, the heavens opened. Something Father had planned was completed in that wilderness season. This is important. You must watch for what was completed in your wilderness season. This is how fullness comes into reality. There are certain things that will produce a fullness in one wilderness season that release us into the Pentecost season ahead. Isaiah prophesied in one season. John the Baptist prophesied in the next. We’re saying, “You can come out of that season. There is something coming!”
THE HEAVENS OPEN AND
A NEW SEASON BEGINS
Jesus came to the wilderness of the last season—a season that stretched hundreds of years back, to the point when time began. All of a sudden there was a fullness of time. All righteousness had been fulfilled. Jesus connected the last season of mankind to the season waiting in the future. The heavens opened and God spoke, and everyone there recognized that the season had ended. A new anointing came down upon Yeshua to lead us into the next season of repentance.
Jesus had to be affirmed as Messiah; He had to be affirmed as a different move of God. And that’s what leads us up to the wilderness temptation. The wilderness temptation is not like other temptations. The wilderness temptation in your life is not the same as a normal temptation you go through. A lot of people don’t think like this.
Jesus had been tempted since the day He was born. He wasn’t the boy in the bubble. He was tempted when He was twelve years old when His parents wanted Him to pull out of what He was forming. He was tempted as a man. But this wilderness temptation when He was thirty years old was different from anything He’d experienced before because the wilderness temptation represented His new season that He was now leading in.
The wilderness temptation that Jesus went through was a greater type of confrontation than He had ever experienced, because a whole new season hinged on that temptation. That’s why the warfare was different. He had to connect worlds. He needed to connect two worlds in this temptation. He was connecting a physical world with a spiritual world that was a new, divine connection. Heaven and Earth connected in a different way. In a wilderness temptation, we’re not just prophesying to prophesy, and we’re not teaching just to teach. Rather, we are in a different moment in a history of the manifestation of the word. There is this divine connecting of worlds, and that’s why the temptation is greater.
Once Jesus made it through this temptation, He needed to return to last season’s structure and look face-to-face at those who watched Him grow up. He had to go back to Nazareth, to the synagogue, and face off in the place He’d been going all those years. The very people who had been worshiping with Him in the last season needed to face off with who He was in the new season. Did you recognize this is what was happening? He had to go back to the same synagogue He grew up in and face them off in the new He came through. And in doing that, He cast a demon out of the synagogue leader! This is the reality of our wilderness temptation. In this wilderness temptation, certain things are so important for us to understand. First of all, these were not internal temptations Jesus faced. He’d been dealing with that for thirty years. We must get to a point where the enemy is not able to affect us with all our internal issues. These weren’t internal issues that Jesus was facing.
The purpose of any temptation is to gain an advantage over you and to put an upper hand over your land; you are tempted so an upper hand can get over your land. But there’s a level of temptation that is linked to your destiny. That is why the Lord has a certain grace for you when you’re going through all your childish schemes, before you’ve put away your youthful desires. Some people grow old with some besetting sin still in operation that they should have gotten rid of by the time they were twenty-six. We must get past those internal issues, because there is a greater spiritual world out there that God wants to use us in. Jesus’s temptation was linked with the original intent of Father for His life. Those temptations were coming to connect with the inward, original intent that He was to accomplish in His future.
Those temptations were not attacking Jesus the man but Jesus the Messiah, because seasons had shifted. There will be corporate temptations for a church, business, ministry, and family until that work reaches the true identity that God intended. The enemy intends these temptations to prevent a full identity from manifesting. You must get to a place of maturity where you display who you are and are used to change or influence the culture you are positioned in for your future.
There are levels and degrees of temptation. Unlike Peter, who went back to an old vocation after failing in his moment of trial, Jesus did not return to being a carpenter. With Jesus, the temptation was against His future destiny and identity as Messiah. He was no longer a carpenter; He was God as man, who would resist and redeem man. There are times that Satan will come against you to stop you from manifesting who you will be in the future. You have to recognize this plot every time you make a shift to a new place. You have to ask yourself, “Why am I going through this here?” It’s because your destiny will now be seen in a new way in a new place.
Jesus’s temptations were designed to tempt Him so He would not be the head of a new movement. He was not being tempted over the old, fallen race. He was being tempted in a whole new movement of a redeemed people who were going to take dominion in a new way. The temptations were to stop God’s redemptive plan for mankind. They were to break the power of the anointing that had come from heaven when heaven opened. All of a sudden these wilderness temptations were contending with the voice that had entered the earth and commissioned the next level of redemption for mankind. These temptations were not contending with Jesus’s last thirty years. Rather, there was contention because heaven had opened up and a new anointing had come down on Him like a dove. The Spirit was now leading a new movement, so hell had to attempt to keep an upper hand over mankind. Every time you get a new anointing, hell will contend against you.
Now let’s look at the power of the tempter and how he works against us in a new season as opposed to an old season. First of all, he realized Jesus was in a famished condition. He was tired. He was hungry. He had pressed through one season, and now He was in the wilderness, led by the Spirit, with a new anointing that had come on Him—but without any sustenance. When this happened to the children of Israel, they murmured. Jesus withstood.
Satan must find the right moment to take advantage of you before your identity reflects your future. Jesus needed to redeem what the serpent did to entice Adam, the old man. The new man is already working, but Satan went back to Adam, the old man, and tried his oldest method on Him. He said, “Are You … ?” He needed to put doubt in Jesus’s mind, because when the heavens opened, the Word that came upon Him was, “You are My beloved Son.”
Satan had to ask Him, “Are You really that? Are You really that which was said about You? Have you really shifted Your identity from the last season to this season? Are we really in a new dimension? Is heaven really connecting?” The tempter’s oldest method was used first—but it failed.
He then attempted to incite Jesus to be dissatisfied. He does the same things with us and tries to make us dissatisfied with our new place. Some might say, “We were doing good. Why are you trying to change things?” In a new season, we must learn to be satisfied in our new place. We must see new manifestations of God’s glory. We must move forward in a new way, but Satan will do whatever he can to stop us. One of his strategies is to say, “I have to make you dissatisfied with this new place you’re in, and I have to make you impatient to try to get out of it sooner than God’s going to get you out of it.”
Satan said to Jesus, “I’m going to use Your self-will to try to tell You some good things that will get You out of this place sooner. Why should You be denying yourself? Why don’t You go eat something? Why are You going through all this? You’ve already been called Messiah.”
Jesus basically said, “I’m in a wilderness place because the Spirit put Me there. I’m going to deny Myself in this wilderness place until Father tells Me differently. I am going to stay here until I come forth with power. I am going to stay here until every temptation known to man has been resisted. Only Father knows when I have completed My time here. I can trust Him to keep Me here until I have fulfilled this assignment.”
The tempter said, “Why don’t You eat something? You’ll be better off in here if You just eat.” Jesus resisted by taking the Word of God. Satan also used the Word of God. It’s the height of a religious force. Jesus had to use the Word of God to counteract the Word of God that Satan was using. That’s how religion hangs on for dear life. Jesus resisted by going to Deuteronomy 8:3 and using that Word against the enemy.
The second temptation the enemy presents was based upon Jesus’s call. Here’s the subtlety of what the enemy does. Jesus came to redeem the kingdoms of the world, so Satan tried to take His call and offer it to Him out of time. “Let me give You this thing more quickly.” In other words, “Let me show You a way to compromise for You to take dominion. You don’t want to go through the process of all that warfare to take dominion in that thing God’s promised You. I can show You some shortcuts!” What Yeshua does is to use Deuteronomy 6:13 (author’s paraphrase): “Fear the Lord with all your heart and take your oaths in His name.” The Word in the wilderness is an overcoming key to neutralize any strategy of vexation. I actually think this was the greatest of all His temptations, because the greatest of any temptation is going to be against your destined call. To accomplish your call, you will have to learn how to use the Word.
Remember when Jesus called Peter the name of Satan. Peter was attempting to divert the Lord from going to Jerusalem to meet His captors. When that voice of enticement is coming into your mind and heart, no matter the source, you must equate the voice to your adversary, Satan.
Here is another incredible temptation, and this is where your demise can come. Satan tempted Jesus to put God to a test. God tells us that we can test Him. In Malachi He said, “If you’ll give, I’ll prove Myself to you.” God still says, “You can put Me to the test by giving, like I gave with My Son.” But what Satan was attempting to do was produce the height of presumption. Everything being said was right, but it was not in God’s timing. He was using the Word to justify this temptation. But Jesus used Deuteronomy 6:16 and rebuked the tempter. In your wilderness, the Lord will get you to a place where you rebuke your tempter.
These temptations were categories of temptations that will affect each one of us throughout our lives. However, there is nothing that we will face in any wilderness season that was not confronted by our Lord in His forty-day period of testing. He came through triumphantly. So can you!
Notice this: “Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region” (Luke 4:14). One of the first places He returned to was Nazareth. There He displayed His new identity to those He loved and had grown with the longest. Nazareth rejected His new identity. They could recognize His goodness, perhaps even His prophetic ability, but because of familiarity, they could not see Him as Messiah. Many who are determined to stay in an old wineskin never embrace those who move into the new.
In this new season, you can be new, look new, and operate with new authority. Let every wilderness place work to empower you. Trust God to keep you there until you have heard the word clearly. Trust Him to empower you so that when you leave, you will overcome every obstacle in your path ahead.