It says here that He was led. It says in Mark that He was driven into the wilderness. So take your pick. At any rate, it makes me wonder about something. I think there is no doubt that Jesus from His study of the Old Testament scriptures, knew a great deal about what was going to be required of Him. What He would have to do would be to study very thoroughly and very prayerfully, all the prophecies that involve His life and the things that He would do. Yet, in most cases, there is no detail, there is only the skeletal framework of what His responsibilities are going to be.
A good example of that is in Isaiah 53 which prophesized of His death. It does not go into much detail. It only says that He was going to bear the sins of all of us and that He was going to spill out His blood on the ground. In Psalm 22, it gives a little bit more detail in regard to some of the things that He was going to go through. But still, even putting both of those together, there is not a lot of real intimate detail of the particulars that He was going to have to go through.
Now, I wonder if there is any place that you know of in the Old Testament where it said that He was going to have to face Satan the Devil in an all-out war? Well, I do not know, there might be some place, but I do not know. That is why it makes me wonder about that word in Mark where it says that the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. Matthew and Luke both use the word led and it kind of softens it, but He was apparently led of God directly from His baptism out into a place where there was going to take place the greatest battle that has ever been fought on the face of this earth. No doubt, I feel that God had things in mind that had to be accomplished. One of these, of course, was that He was going to have to overcome Satan in order to qualify to be the ruler. That is the subject material of the first part of chapter 4, this great battle that took place.
It says back in Matthew 4:1 that Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. Now, the word tempted here in English has a uniformly bad meaning. In English, it means to entice a person to do wrong, to seduce. But in the Greek, it does not mean that at all. It simply means to test for the purpose of evaluating. To test as in a laboratory one would test metal to see what kind of properties it had within it. Or to test in the sense of the way you would a used car that you are thinking of buying. You know, you go around and kick the tires and gun the engine and do certain things to test it out. Well, that is what God was doing here with Jesus. He was using Satan the Devil as an instrument to make the test. So He was testing Him to evaluate certain properties that were in Him.
So whenever God gives you a test, since Jesus Christ is the example for us, if He gives you a test or allows one to come upon you, its purpose is never to seduce you to sin. It is never to entice you at all. It says very plainly back in James the first chapter that God tempts no man. And there the word tempt is used in the sense of enticing. God never entices somebody to sin or seduces anybody to go in that direction. Rather the kind of test that God either brings upon a person or allows to come upon a person is put there or produced to enable us to conquer sin. So actually, a test is not a penalty at all, but it ought to be looked upon as something that is to our glory. That God should think that we are even strong enough to resist this thing and then it is going to be used for the purpose of building and of strengthening so that we can be used to a greater extent.
It says that Jesus was driven into the wilderness or He was led into the wilderness. The word here is Jeshimon which is translated wilderness and it is that area that is east and a little bit south of Jerusalem. If you can just picture a map of Palestine, Jerusalem sits on a low mountain ridge of about 2,200-2,400 feet high that runs up the center of … . . .
This temptation by the devil happened right after Christ's baptism, His anointing as Messiah. He is the second man, or the last Adam. This is why Satan comes after Christ right after His baptism.
Christ had to be tempted just like the first Adam had been. He was tempted by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life just like Adam and Eve were.
We will be tempted and tried by words, just as Christ was. Christ's example of how to handle this is in the next 10 verses of Matthew 4. This example is showing us how we must fight back, how we fight against the words which become thoughts, which becomes actions, and then becomes sin. Christ shows us what the armor of God is. It is not a mystery; it is right here.
God's loyal angels came and took care of Christ just they do for all of us. We can see by these verses that Satan does not give up easily. He continues the attack until he is soundly defeated.
So we can see that Satan, in his attack on Christ, is very patient. As I mentioned earlier, it may have taken him several thousands or millions of years to convert part of the angels to the dark side. And he did it all with words. That is all he used.
We also see in Satan's attacks on Christ how he does not give up. He is coming after us. He tells some truth, but not all of it. Satan tempts us with lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. So we know that Satan attacks us through words.
We had better be putting on the armor of God that Christ gives us with the example He showed us in Matthew 4. The words of God we find through prayer and Bible study will protect us from Satan, wolves in sheep's clothing, and the tares within God's church.
Christ defeated Satan with the armor of God, which is nothing more than God's words. He defeated Satan in a very weak and vulnerable condition, with the words of God.
Since the initiative in this account is with God, the verse says Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted. So let us start with, What is the nature of temptation? In English the word tempt has come to mean almost without exception, tempt to do evil. But the word tempt in Hebrew and Greek means to test or prove. This can include tempting to do evil, but it often means only a testing to prove the value of or good quality of.
So just as a person might test gold by submerging it in acid, if the gold is pure nothing happens. If it is not, the impurity is burned off. It was in this sense that Abraham was tested by God when he was called to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Job was tested by the things that happened to him. And when the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, the act was a test designed to show that Jesus really was God's Son and that He would follow the path God had laid out for Him. But Satan's purpose for the temptation was evil and it was an attempt to get Jesus to question God's Word, to misuse God's promises in the Scriptures, and to try to win the world for himself by linking up with the Devil rather than by staying loyal to and worshipping God. Because, continuing on in verse 2,
Now, Jesus did not leave us defenseless in the use of the sword. Turn with me, please, back to Matthew. We will look in chapter 4, verse 1. Here, Jesus is showing us that there are three areas in which we will be attacked by these spiritual terrorists.
Now the word tempt has a dual meaning. One, it means to test; to search out; to try; or to put to the proof. Two, it means to entice; to commit evil. Now to entice to commit evil means to deceive or lure someone into going contrary to God's way, breaking His laws. God will never entice us to sin, but Satan and his host of spiritual terrorists will, because they are evil within.
These examples were written for us. This is not the entire battle between Satan and Jesus. If you put the gospels together, you would see that the battle actually began when Jesus on the first day was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit.
Paul truly understood, brethren, the bottom line regarding coveting, as did Jesus Christ. This is the bottom line, and I hope that you find it interesting.
It shows that he was tempted more than once.
One could read this and come to the conclusion that Satan was tempting Jesus to become filled with pride and to show He was the Son of God, or to covet having all the world right now rather than waiting thousands of years. Jesus saw right through all of this to the true reason of Satan's questions - that Satan, through all his temptations, was asking Jesus Christ to obey him - and Jesus responded accordingly. Brethren, that is exactly what Satan is doing with us in his laying all the traps and enticements that produce coveting in us that he might pull us into his world. In short, he is asking you and me to obey him and, I might add, in doing so, to worship him.
Turn over to Matthew 4. This is the tempting of Jesus Christ. With this, we can see how He handled these things. Jesus was to be tempted by Satan. And, just as His nature was being tested to see if He could be drawn away from His Father's truth (His Father's way of living) by being tempted with evil, so we too are being tested and tempted in the same way. It should encourage you to think about that.
The devil is the Adversary, being full of subtlety. In Ephesians 6, he is referred to as wily - setting traps. He is full of envy and hatred. And this is the one who is doing the tempting.
