This is the third installment in our series, From Eden to Easter: Life and Death in the Garden. Each day throughout Holy Week, we will take a special look at the gardens and wildernesses of Scripture, and in particular, these scenes' connections to Christ's redemption won for us on the cross.
After being led by Spirit into the wilderness, Jesus undergoes forty days of suffering and is tempted by the devil. All three synoptic Gospels tell us this story (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13). All three synoptic Gospels put this story front and center for us to watch the great accuser take his best shot against our great Savior.
This is one of the more familiar stories in Children's Story Bibles and fodder for Sunday School Felt boards. Jesus' three trials have been captured in art and literature from Botticelli and Tintoretto to Milton and Dostoyevsky. Whether through striking pieces of art or reimagined in literature, we're drawn to this "heavyweight” fight between good and evil, the ultimate showdown.
The story is a memorable one: Satan asks Jesus to turn stones into bread to sate his own hunger and prove his ability to provide for temporal needs. Jesus is led to a high place where he can see "all the kingdoms of the world,” and in exchange for worshipping him, the devil offers the splendor and riches of the world. Finally, from the high point of the temple, the devil questions if angels would really protect Jesus if he were to jump. Jesus rebukes the devil through each temptation by quoting Scripture and trusting in his Father.
But have you ever wondered why the devil tempted Jesus in these particular ways? With only a few attempts at drawing the Messiah off of his divinely ordained path, why did Satan choose these temptations?
To understand Christ's temptations, we need to look backward to the Old Testament and forward to our present situation.
When Adam and Eve were cast east of Eden, the world turned from paradise to wilderness. The wilderness would come to be represented in the Israelites' years of wandering. Job would portray it as desolate and godforsaken, "a land where no man is" (Job 38:26).
And if the way out is through, Jesus must conquer the wilderness to restore paradise.
His temptations are reminiscent of the similar temptations suffered by those Israelites who wandered and too often succumbed to them. And so, after forty days, Jesus would do what they couldn't after forty years.
They grumbled for food, not trusting God's providence. But Jesus rebuked the Devil, trusting in the sufficiency of God's promises in providing for us. The wandering Israelites and their offspring would often fear for their own personal safety and grumble against God, putting him to the test and making expedient arrangements for their security. But when Satan tempts Jesus to put God's provision to the test, he refuses.
And if provisions for food and safety are accounted for, what else would God's faithless people succumb to? Worldly power and the riches and leisure that come with it.
If the way out is through, Jesus must conquer the wilderness to restore paradise.
God's people in the desert often turned to the "princes" of this world – worshipping foreign gods and power such that they could have the riches and leisure of the world. Jesus is offered this if he will worship the "prince of this world," but condemns any worship not directed at God alone.
Jesus is on a mission to fulfill the covenant in the exact places where the Israelites were unable.
The Israelites aren’t the only ones who are incapable of overcoming temptation. The same pull toward sin has plagued the church throughout the centuries. We bow down to the idols of temporal provisions and safety, as well as to the glory and riches of the world that are fading away.
I can pray "give us this day our daily bread" and then grumble and stress about egg prices and property taxes.
I’m quick to pull up WebMD and ruminate about concerning symptoms before getting on my knees to pray for healing, not only from the great Physician himself but also through those he has gifted with the vocations of care in mind, body, and soul.
And as for the glory and riches of the world? I don't need that much, just a little, thank you. And then a little more. Just enough, I tell myself, to tide me over until the glories of the next one.
And so here, the faithful Jesus is not only reversing the wilderness curse of the Israelites and their faithlessness but mine as well. In Hebrews 4:15-16 we read, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
Jesus' temptation and obedience to the law were not merely an object lesson and fodder for artists but a way for the second member of the Trinity to empathize with us in our current temptations.
When Adam and Eve cursed that first paradise into the wilderness, they hid from their God out of shame and guilt. How often do we do the same, assuming, perhaps unconsciously, that God can't know what it's like to be us, or to suffer like us. Yet the author of Hebrews tells us that we have a high priest who can empathize with us so that we can approach the throne of grace with confidence, a confidence that his grace is ours despite our sin and weaknesses. It is because Christ is not only God himself, but also flesh and blood just like us, tempted and afflicted in every way, and yet without sin, that he can be both our high priest and the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He not only knows whatever wilderness we face, on the cross, he's freed us from the faithlessness that creates it. Amidst our Lenten wandering and wilderness, let us look backward and forward to his active obedience, his current empathy for us, and his obedience to suffering on the cross by which the good news of Easter morning becomes our good news.
