"Then was Jesus led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." (Matt.4.1)

The baptism of Jesus was not the result of a sudden decision. He came to Jordan with His mind already set on the mission before Him. He had for many years been studying the Old Testament Scriptures, perceiving more and more clearly what His lifework was to be. He came to John at just the right time, when he was thirty years old and therefore 'of age' under the Jewish law. The same Holy Spirit of God that had supervised and guided His every action since childhood, had opened His mind to the meaning of the Scriptures, and drawn Him to Bethabara where John was baptising. Now, the Holy Spirit was leading Him ‑ Mark says driving Him ‑ to the next phase of His experience, the sober consideration of how and in what way He was to carry out His mission of saving the world. It was inevitable that the temptations should come, and in the very nature of things that they should come right at the beginning of His ministry, when, conscious of His Divine power, He would very quickly realise the possibilities.

"He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry." He had gone into the wilderness "in the spirit", a condition of mind something like that of John in Revelation, when he was "in the spirit on the Lord's day" (Rev.1.10). Or perhaps of Ezekiel when the Spirit lifted him up by the river of Chebar, and he saw visions of God (Ezek.7.3). In such a condition of mind Jesus would be more than usually insensible to His surroundings and His bodily needs. His mind, fully occupied during those forty days and nights with the prospect before Him, going over all the details of the mission He was setting out to accomplish, would give but little heed to the claims of the body. It is not likely that He ate nothing at all during that time, but that He spared time from His rapt condition of mind only to take the barest sustenance, so when at last He began again to become conscious of His environment the claims of hunger asserted themselves.

"And when the tempter came to him." In this story of the temptations the whole idea conveyed is that of a personal being with whom our Lord held converse. This was certainly the general belief in our Lord's own day. The Book of Wisdom, which was written within fifty years of the time of Christ, is an accurate reflection of Jewish thought at the time of the First Advent. In Wisdom 2.24 it is indicated that the devil (diabolos) is the one through whom death came into the world at the beginning, as related in the third chapter of Genesis. It is important also to remember that the story as we have it must have come from our Lord's own lips, for no one else could have told these things to His disciples; and there is an interesting fragment in the so-called "Gospel of the Ebionites" that asserts this much: "The Lord told us that for forty days the Devil spoke with him and tempted him".

It might be said of course that the account could have been given to the Evangelists by direct inspiration, but in that case the accounts would surely have been in the same order. That they differ as much as they do, points to their having been written from the recollections of the disciples as to what Jesus did say actually to them, even although without doubt they were guided in their writing by the Holy Spirit.

We can picture Jesus, sitting with His disciples on a grassy bank, or walking with them through the fields, suddenly making some allusion to that time which was the preface to His ministry. He would tell them of the insidious suggestions that came into His mind, and the replies with which He countered them, when for forty days and forty nights He was alone with Satan.            This temptation of Jesus is the preface to His life and work, just as the temptation of the first Adam was the preface to the life and work of man. The first Adam failed under temptation; the second triumphed. There is a striking analogy between the first and second temptations. The tree of Gen.3.6 was good for food; in Matt.4 Jesus is invited to make the stones into bread. The tree was pleasant to the eyes; Jesus is urged to create a magnificent spectacle by throwing Himself down from the Temple. The tree was "greatly to be desired to make one wise"; all the power, wealth, and honour of this world is offered to our Lord.

Mark puts in a detail that has escaped the other Evangelists. He says that Jesus "was with the wild beasts". A strange phrase; connected with it perhaps is the old Christian tradition that when Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness all the wild beasts of the world came before Him to pay homage. Perhaps there is a profound truth behind the tradition and behind Mark's statement. Perfect man possessed powers of control over the lower creation which were lost at the Fall. Jesus must have possessed those powers and doubtless exercised them in the wilderness. Leopards, wolves, hyenas and jackals lived in that same wilderness in the Lord's day, and there may even have been an occasional lion, for they were plentiful there in earlier days. Wolves were seen there even in the twentieth century. The Lord may well have told His disciples of His exercise of such power and Mark records the bare kernel of what He said.

"If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread." Not that Jesus might allay His hunger; the suggestion was more subtle than that. It was nothing less than that He use His powers to satisfy the material needs of man there and then. Jesus had come that men might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Here was a short cut to that glorious fulness of human life to which Jesus intends eventually to draw "whosoever will''. Why not do that at once, without waiting for the much longer outworking of God's purpose. It would be so easy to transform the economic system of the country, to drive out the Roman soldiers and the tax-gatherers and all who became fat upon the misery of the people. Why not make the barren land fruitful and productive and the vineyards and olive-groves yield tenfold their former fruitage. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." It would be so easy to bring about literal fulfilment of those old prophecies, and to bring in the Times of Restoration at once, instead of waiting God's own time.

That would have deprived humankind of needed experience of obedience, it would not have dealt with sin, and death would still continue even though man's lot had been immeasurably improved. Jesus knew that the life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment, and He knew too that there could be only one possible answer to the suggestion. That was found in Deut.8 "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

Then followed another temptation. "The devil took him up into the holy city, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down'; for it is written 'He shall give his angels charge of you...'" This "pinnacle of the temple" was probably the parapet of the portico of Herod, overlooking the valley of Jehoshaphat seven hundred feet below. It was not literally, but spiritually, that Jesus stood on that parapet and heard the insidious voice suggesting that by some such spectacular feat He could attract the notice of all men to His mission. Perhaps He remembered the tradition, current in His own day amongst the Jews, that the Messiah would appear suddenly from Heaven descending upon the crowd of worshippers in the Temple court. But there was more in the temptation than that. Judas in later days was beset by the same temptation, and fell under it. Jesus, standing in spirit on the pinnacle of the temple, realised all that the sacred edifice stood for to the patriotic Jew. Two parties at least, the Pharisees and the Zealots, longed desperately for the day when the alien usurper would be driven out from Judah's land and the people of God enter into their inheritance again. To all such, the Temple became the symbol of their hopes and their cause. Jesus must have thought how easy it would be to assume the leadership of those political parties and from the pinnacle of that power gather every element in the country to a swift descent upon the Roman authority, driving it far beyond the boundaries of Judea and establishing the mountain of the Lord's house in the top of the mountains.

That would be setting up the Kingdom of love and peace by means of the sword, and Jesus knew that "they who take the sword must perish with the sword". Hezekiah the Zealot had tried it, and failed. His son Judas the Galilean nearly won through, but he failed. In the year A.D.70 the entire nation, driven to desperation, tried again, and failed so utterly that they lost all and were scattered among the nations. Jesus turned away from the alluring prospect, knowing that this was not the way of God.

"The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, 'All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me'." Luke says that the Devil showed Him all these kingdoms and their glory "in a moment of time". John Bunyan's scornful comment on that observation was "it did not take the devil long to show all that he had". As Jesus thought of the great panoply of human might represented in the kingdoms of this world, He might well have pondered on the manner in which He would eventually succeed to the throne of the world. Instead of confining His mission and work to the land and people of Israel, why not reach out to the lands beyond, to Egypt and Greece, and to Parthia, Rome's great rival in the East. Why not wrest the rule of Rome itself from the feeble fingers of the ageing Tiberius Caesar, and from that great city rule in righteousness.

Jesus rejected the short cut, the easy way, the course that could lead only to temporary alleviation of human misery and none at all of human sin. He re-affirmed His determination to follow, at all costs, the pathway marked out for Him by His Father. He answered all the suggestions with "It is written" (quoting Moses in Deuteronomy chapters 6 and 8), and the Devil, baffled, left him for a season.

AOH