1Then Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted there by the Devil.2For forty days and forty nights he ate nothing and became very hungry.3Then the Devil came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, change these stones into loaves of bread 4 But Jesus told him, "No! The Scriptures say, `People need more than bread for their life; they must feed on every word of God.'" 5Then the Devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple,6and said, "If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, `He orders his angels to protect you. And they will hold you with their hands to keep you from striking your foot on a stone.'" 7Jesus responded, "The Scriptures also say, `Do not test the Lord your God.'"8Next the Devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him the nations of the world and all their glory.9"I will give it all to you," he said, "if you will only kneel down and worship me."10"Get out of here, Satan," Jesus told him. "For the Scriptures say, `You must worship the Lord your God; serve only him.'" 11Then the Devil went away, and angels came and cared for Jesus.

If one looks at these verses in the order that they appear in Scripture, one will notice that this wilderness experience took place after Jesus was baptized in water by John The Baptist, stepped out of the river Jordan, and received the impartation of the Holy Spirit. This is a very critical step that was done in the life of Jesus. This step showed the result and the reward for the obedience Jesus presented himself to the will of the father. By going beyond the river and leaving the river, Jesus received the impartation of the Holy Spirit on his life and God pronounced on him as "This is my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with him." This was necessary because in Matthew chapter four and verse one, the Scriptures clearly state "Then Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted there by the Devil." Without the baptism of the Spirit, Jesus would not have had any direction in what to do, where to go, etc to fulfill the will of the father. It took the baptism of the Spirit and the infilling of the Spirit in order for Jesus to be led by the Spirit to go into the wilderness.

Do many "in the river" fear "going beyond the river" because they fear losing the good times they had dancing, singing songs of metaphorical metaphysics in the Christianese language, and do not wish to experience the further trials, temptations, and tribulations of traveling down a straighter and narrower road? Do many "in the river" fear "going beyond the river" because they fear they have to leave the spiritual incubator called the church to reach the world for Jesus? I do admit that if every Christian was directly asked by God "Do you want to go to the wilderness?", the majority of Christians will probably answer either "No" or "I refuse to receive that by faith". How many Christians do you know that wake up in the morning when the alarm clock goes off and makes a proclamation of "Today, I want to go to the wilderness." I would say the answer to that question is none to a very few amount of people. The idea of wilderness is seen as a dreadful experience and / or as "hate punishment" from God instead of in certain cases where the Spirit leads one there for a period of time.

In fact, the verse specifically states that the divine purpose of Jesus spending time in the wilderness was to be tempted by the Devil. We look at that today and determine that we must eliminate temptation by political means. As you can see in the Scriptures, the purpose was not to eliminate temptation, but to overcome the temptation. We think by legislation righteousness and eliminating temptation that we will have utopia and everything will be hunky-dory. By eliminating the external force that influences the poor internal choice, we believe that everything will be "sanctified" in God's eyes. However, Jesus never called us to sanctify the earth. Jesus called us to sanctify ourselves as the temple of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill Great Commission mandates. In fact, many New Age rituals are based on the "purification of the earth" to make the earth pure. I stated in part four of my article Temptation to Temple that "Therefore, temptation is nothing new, not a personal vendetta against you, nor is it a punishment for some "hidden" sin you may have committed. Temptation is a normal part of everyday life. Therefore, in order to begin the battle to conquer and defeat temptation, one must now begin to realize that temptation will never go away and we will never eliminate the temptation. The same thing goes with Satan, we will not eliminate Satan until the day as foretold in Revelation that Jesus finally conquers Satan and sets up the New Jerusalem.". It is not the temptation in and of itself that is wrong. It is what we do with the temptation. If the temptation in and of itself was wrong, then the Spirit would not have been pure and of God because the Spirit would not have led Jesus to sin. Instead, the Spirit led Jesus to overcome the external forces influencing internal choices.

If you look at verse two, we see that the wilderness was for forty days and forty nights. Therefore, we see that the wilderness of our life has a definite time beginning and a definite time ending. For some people, this may be a couple of months while for others it would be for a couple of years. We also see in this verse that Jesus went into the wilderness without the provisions for a requirement for survival and that the manifestations of not meeting the needs of the requirement of survival took place. In this specific case, Jesus went into the wilderness without food (a requirement for survival) and verse two states that he became very hungry. The hunger was the manifestation caused by the lack of food not eaten for those forty days. Some people have experienced the wilderness of actual hunger because they had no money to buy food to eat. Some experience the wilderness of unemployment and the pressures of paying bills, providing for the family appear in the wilderness. Christ here shows that he felt the burdens and pressures of humanity taking upon himself our natural infirmities.

If you notice, Christ was not hungry from days one through thirty-nine. It was day forty that the hunger was noticed and the potential for weakness exposed. It was at this time that Satan began to tempt Jesus to bring Jesus to the point of sinning against God, his heavenly father. On a side note, I find it interesting that days one through thirty-nine are not discussed as to what happened during that time. I find this relevant because after you see the end of the story, what happened between days one through thirty-nine is not significant in and of itself, but what happened during days one through thirty-nine does influence whether or not you are able to overcome and see the ending of the wilderness.

Please Click here for part three of this article.