Being a parent is challenging, so it’s a huge relief when your children get old enough that you can leave them at home. With our children, we leave them with a few common-sense rules: no fire, no cooking, and no fighting. Of course, I had those rules when I was a boy, but that doesn’t mean I followed them. When my brother, Patrick, and I were young, my mom and dad left us on one occasion in the fall of the year. My mom had begun decorating. She’d gotten out some scented candles and a few other things. Patrick, to help Mama out and brighten the room, decided, while they were gone, to light one of those candles and place it in the kitchen window. Neither of us considered, though, that he had placed it in the window, directly beneath a wreath made of dried corn husks. Patrick and I had hardly turned our attention back to our Nintendo when we heard the whoosh of flames and saw the light of the fire dancing on the wall. We turned to see that entire wreath up in flames. Thankfully, we hurried to fill a glass of water and managed to put out the fire before it burned the house down. We scrambled to hide the evidence by rushing the charred wreath out to the trash and mopping up the water. Then, we went back to playing our video games like nothing had happened. But, when Mama came in the door, she couldn’t miss the smell of smoke. No sooner had she asked, “what did yall burn?” than her attention was drawn to the missing wreath. We couldn’t deny it, and so we blurted out our confession and faced the resulting spanking.
In my brothers’ defense, he had good intentions in lighting that candle. He wanted to please his mother by helping to decorate and to make the room more fragrant. And yet, even with good intentions, he was still disobedient. So it is with humanity and God. As I mentioned last week, obedience to God’s law isn’t just a question of avoiding certain behaviors or substances. Obedience is also a matter of doing the things that God would require. And yet, because of the fall of Adam and the infectious nature of sin, we cannot be obedient to God, either in our ability to avoid what should not be done, or to do that which should be done. As Paul says, in Rom. 8:7, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot.”
There are two possible solutions to the problem of our disobedience. You might think, “You know, if men and women just had direct access to God and his will, they could overcome sin and live in obedience.” This is precisely what God did through the nation of Israel. The Lord rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt by his mighty hand. He visited with the elders of Israel, face to face, at the base of the mountain while a cloud and lightning covered it. He gave them his law directly by his own hand. Yet, even with all of that, the people grumbled. And, even while Moses was receiving the Law from the hand of God, the people were breaking those commandments in debauched idolatry.
But, there is another solution to the problem of disobedience. What if one man did what we could not do? What if that one man offered to God the obedience we cannot, and in that offering, he substituted his obedience for our disobedience. God has done this through his son, Jesus Christ, and we find that in Mark 1:12-13. From this passage, I want you to see that Jesus, as the Messiah, faced the temptations of expulsion, enticement, and endangerment so that we may be made right with God.
First, see that Jesus faced the temptation of expulsion for us. I think we can make the mistake of thinking that Jesus only faced three temptations in his life. We might think, because we know the other accounts of Jesus’s temptation by Satan, that Jesus was tempted with his hunger, with doubt, and with power, and from that conclude that this was the only chance he had to sin. But, you’ll notice right away that Mark’s account of his temptation is very different, both in its length and its emphasis. Mark doesn’t even mention the three temptations of Satan. Instead, he focuses on the entirety of Jesus’s experience in the wilderness. All of Jesus’s life was a war against sin. He was tempted as a child to disobey his parents. He was tempted as a youth with pride and lust. He was tempted as a young adult with ambition and greed. He was tempted in his ministry with power and influence. As Heb. 4:15 says, he was tempted in every way as we are. Mark’s account highlights that Jesus was driven out into the wilderness and was tempted the entire time he was there – for the full 40 days of exile.
This temptation began with his expulsion into the wilderness. Mark tells us in verse 12 that, immediately after his baptism, the Holy Spirit “drove him into the wilderness.” There is something kind of disturbing about this account. For one, the word “drove out” is ekbalio, which means to cast away or expel. In the NT, it’s really only used to speak of casting out demons or Satan. So, at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and immediately after his baptism, God casts him out. It’s also notably disturbing where the Spirit casts him. He is driven into the wilderness. Keep in mind, Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, which forms the border of Ancient Israel. To the East of the Jordan are the lands of Moab and Edom, where the people of Israel wondered for 40 years. This is not a place of blessing and abundance. It is a place of desolation, abandonment, and evil. The Spirit drives Jesus out of the presence of God’s people, out of the promised land, away from the blessings of Israel, and into Satan’s territory. In this, Jesus was tempted in the same ways that Israel was. Even though Israel had been set free from bondage in Egypt, at every turn they dreamed of going back rather than going forward. The wilderness, for them, was a place of hunger, thirst, and loss. They couldn’t trust God, even as he delivered them at every turn. But Jesus trusted and obeyed. He went willingly into the isolation of the wilderness so that he might give back to God the obedience of faithfulness.
Second, he was tempted with enticement. In verse 13, Mark tells us that while Jesus was in the wilderness, he was “being tempted by Satan.” Notice, again, that Mark uses the perfect tense in speaking of Jesus’ temptation. He doesn’t say, “he was tempted”, but “he was being tempted”, implying that Satan tempted Jesus the whole time he was in the wilderness. He was tempted by Satan to doubt God’s provision after fasting for 40 days. Remember, Israel was tempted with hunger, too. As they marched through the wilderness, they grumbled that they didn’t have any food, so God gave them the bread of heaven. Then, they grumbled that all they had to eat was manna, so God gave them quail. They grumbled from thirst, so God gave them water from a rock. God provided these things for 40 years, until they crossed the Jordan River into the promised land. So, when we read in Matt. 4 that Satan’s first temptation to Jesus was to turn rocks into bread, realize that Jesus could respond like his forefathers. He could grumble with hunger pains. He could question God’s ability to provide. But instead, he obeys by waiting on God to provide.
Satan also tempted him to doubt the purpose of God. In the account from Matthew, we know that Satan took him to the height of the temple and challenged him to jump so that the angels would catch him and prove his position as the Messiah. Israel had been tempted with God’s purpose as well. In Numbers 16 we read of the clan of Korah, who protested Moses’ leadership. They complained that everyone should have a say in the leadership of Israel, not just Moses and Aaron. So, God called Moses to draw a line in the sand and invite everyone who was with him to step across. Once everyone had made their decision, God caused a great chasm to open up and swallow the camp of Korah. Jesus was tempted to question the authority and purpose of God, too, but he obeyed by refusing to exert his own authority and instead wait on God.
Lastly, Satan tempted Jesus to doubt the power of God. Again, Matthew tells us that Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and told him that he could rule them all if he would but worship him. Oh, how enticing the ways of the world can be. How enticing it is to try the shortcut to happiness. How tempting to think, we don’t need to get married. We love each other, and that’s all that matters. How tempting to think, why am I working so hard for this measly check when I could just embezzle the company money and get rich in half the time. Israel was tempted by the power of the world, too. From the time they left Egypt, they worshiped other gods. Even while receiving the ten commandments, they broke the first two. They did so thinking that those other gods could give them the power and success they thought they lacked in Jehovah. Jesus refused to go the way of sinful humanity in their false worship for the sake of power. Instead, he worshiped and waited on the Lord.
Finally, we see from Mark’s account that Jesus faced the temptation of endangerment. In verse 13 it tells us that Jesus was with the wild animals. Now, understand, this is no tranquil, fairytale scene. The word for “wild animals” is the idea of a dangerous beast. It’s used to refer to the serpent that bit Paul in Acts 28 and the beast of the Antichrist in Revelation 11. Mark points this out to tell us that Jesus is in real danger in the wilderness. He had starved himself nearly to death. He was continually tempted by Satan. And now, we find that he was in constant danger from wild beasts. And yet, even with that danger, even in the temptations, even with the abandonment, he still rested and waited on the Lord. And, we are told, at the end of verse 13, that God was still with him in all of that. We are told – “the angels were ministering to him.”
In all of these temptations, Jesus gave back to God the obedience we could not. He waited on God in his isolation. He trusted God in the face of temptation. He rested in God in spite of the danger. Because he has done this, he has proven himself to be our faithful high priest. And, because he has faced our temptations and defeated them, he is able to help us in our time of weakness. So, Heb. 2:18 says, “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” We are able to face temptation, and yes, even to resist it, because of what Christ has done. Paul says, in 1 Cor. 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” In Jesus, we have the power to resist sin. We have the power to trust in God, even when we feel abandoned. We have the power to wait on God and his purpose. We have the power to rest in God’s ways, even when tempted to shortcut by going the way of the world.
And, we can resist temptation knowing that Christ will win the final victory over sin and Satan. Rev. 12:10 looks forward to that final hope: “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down… and they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” So may we resist temptation and live for Christ as we wait on that final victory.
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