04. The Time and Place of the Temptation

The Time and Place of the Temptation

" Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John would have hindered him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? But Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffereth him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."(Matthew 3:13-17)

" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered."(Matthew 4:1-2)

"And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straight way coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him; and a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased. And straightway the Spirit driveth him forth into the wilderness."(Mark 1:9-12)

"Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that, Jesus also having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased. (Luke 3:21-22)

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil. And he did eat nothing in those days: and when they were completed, he hungered." (Luke 4:1-2)

EACH of the three evangelists who record the temptation of our Lord begins the record with a word which indicates the close and profound connection there was between the temptation and the events which immediately preceded it in the life of Christ St Matthew commences his account with the word "Then;" and St Mark and St Luke do not even interrupt their narrative, but as if the temptation were only a part of what had just gone before, they couple its record with that of the preceding history by the conjunction "And." Now to say that Christ’s temptation was not an isolated event in His experience, wholly disconnected with His previous history, is only to say of our Lord what is true of every temptation that assaults the human soul. The temptations of to-day are always more or less the result of the life of yesterday, the character and actions of the past reappearing, not only in the good, but in the evil of the present. For even where there has been no yielding to sin, as in the case of our Lord, it by no means follows, as we shall see, that the triumphs of goodness itself may not be used by the tempter as fresh occasions of temptation to the soul. It is from the loftiest heights of holiness that the deepest fall into sin is always possible. To understand fully the temptation of Christ, we must therefore understand the period in His human life at which it took place, and the his tory which immediately preceded it.

One great event the Baptism of Christ stands out in the sacred narrative in each of the three evangelists as having been the immediate precursor of the temptation; and we have now to enquire into the significance of our Lord’s baptism, and into its relation to the temptation that succeeded it. The baptism of Christ was, first of all, the public announcement and inauguration of Christ to His work. John the Baptist had come "to bear witness of the Light that all might believe through him," (John 1:7) and now his work was nearly done. He had "prepared the way of the Lord" by preaching "repentance unto Israel," and by warning men everywhere that One greater than himself was at hand. One last act and it was John’s greatest act remained to be done, the solemn setting apart of the Christ to His redeeming work. At length the time for this had come. Jesus was baptized of John in the Jordan. The baptism closed our Lord’s private life, and began His public ministry. He who had gone down into the water known to men as "the Son of Mary," came up thence declared to be "the Son of God." The baptism, with the opened heavens, and the Spirit "descending like a dove,’’ and" abiding "on Jesus, and the witness borne by the voice of God Himself," This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, ’ was the sublime inauguration of the Saviour of the world to His great mission. From that hour John’s prophetic work was done. It expired, to use Davison’s beautiful image, as Old Testament prophecy had expired, with "the Gospel upon its tongue."⁴ As soon as the Christ was manifested unto Israel, John begins to vanish from the history; as "the star which opens the gates of day, and shuts in the night" is never found very far from the sun, and as the sun appears is lost in its light, so John passes out of sight as Christ draws near. He had but one more word to speak and with that his witness to Christ was ended "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." (John 1:29) [⁴"Discourses on Prophecy," p. 253]

"Then," we read, as immediately following the baptism, "was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." We may see, in part, at any rate, the reason of the temptation thus coming after the baptism. As the baptism had announced the Christ for His work, so the temptation now announces the work to the Christ. Christ’s first public act, His first step in His ministry of redemption, is to be tempted by the devil. He had come to "destroy the works of the devil," and here, in the wilderness, He enters on the first great act of the struggle. Christ and Satan meet face to face. The beginning of the work is at once the key to the whole, and the prophecy of its end.

How far our Lord Himself may have learnt from His temptation the nature of the great work to accomplish which He had become incarnate, we do not know. The whole subject of the growth of Christ’s human soul, the steps by which it grew into the full consciousness of His Divine mission, is so obscure and mysterious, that it is better not to speculate in a region which the wisdom of Scripture has left in darkness; but we can scarcely be wrong in supposing that if the baptism of Jesus first fully revealed to Him the full glory of His Person, and of His relation to the Eternal Father a glory which had been slowly dawning on Him from His youth up wards so the temptation first fully set before Him the greatness of the struggle He had undertaken to endure, and the full bitter ness of the cup which His Father had given Him to drink. The two together, the baptism and the temptation, complete the solemn announcement of the Saviour for His work. The inauguration is followed by the initiation. The commissioning, if we may use the term with deepest reverence, of the Captain of our salvation, is succeeded by His first great conflict with the prince of this world. Christ’s work has begun. But the baptism of our Lord did more than precede His temptation; it prepared the way for it, and this in two ways: it prepared Christ for the temptation, and it prepared the temptation for Christ.

It prepared Christ, first, for His temptation. We have already noticed, in another connection, that the Evangelists who record the temptation emphasize with marked significance the fact that Jesus was "led" or "driven" of the Spirit to His temptation. But St Luke adds to this a still more pregnant expression, for he tells us that Jesus, "full of the Holy Ghost, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil." (Luke 4:1) That this fulness of the Holy Ghost had come upon our Lord’s human nature at His baptism, the Scripture record seems plainly to declare, and if so, we can see at once how closely it was connected with the temptation that followed it. The Divine equipment of the man Christ Jesus preceded the long struggle in which He was now to engage. In all things our example, He puts on "the whole armour of God" before entering on "the good fight of faith."

There is another and an analogous preparation for coming conflict bestowed on Christ at a later period of His ministry, and which .serves to illustrate the special meaning of the baptism in the light in which we are now considering it. Once, and only once, again in the earthly life of our Lord do we read of the voice from heaven uttering the same glorious and solemn witness to the Divine Sonship and mission of Jesus which was given at His baptism. At the transfiguration of Christ, a second time was heaven opened, and a second time God Himself bore witness to His Son in the words, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him.’ (Matthew 17:5, and the parallel passages) But what followed the transfiguration and the heavenly witness? The passion came after the transfiguration, just as the temptation came after the baptism; the glory of the" holy mount "being the preparation of Christ for His cross, just as the fulness of the Holy Ghost received at His baptism was the Divine preparation for the conflict with the devil in the wilderness. But the baptism had a further and final relation to the temptation. If it prepared Christ for the temptation, it also prepared the temptation for Christ. The baptism of the Holy Ghost was not accidentally followed by the first assault of the tempter on Jesus.

It is true that we are apt to think that the possession of unusual spiritual power, or the consciousness of peculiar spiritual elevation, is enough to secure the soul from any further assaults of evil; and that the loftiest elevations of the spiritual life must necessarily be the freest from spiritual peril. But it is not so really. In this life, and we speak of this life alone when we speak of temptation, moments of spiritual exaltation and rapture are sure to be succeeded by some terrible and searching temptation. It is not merely that seasons of peculiar blessedness, whether in spiritual or in temporal things, need to be proved and chastened by the keen and terrible fires of trial; but the trial itself often times arises from the very blessedness we enjoy. It was when Abraham’s heart was filled with joy at the fulfilment of the long-delayed promise God had made to him, and Isaac was growing from boyhood into manhood, every year bringing nearer and nearer the rich heritage of blessing which rested on the heir of the promise, that we come across the ominous words," It came to pass after these things, God did tempt Abraham (Genesis 22:1). It was when David had reached the zenith of his prosperity and power, and the glory of his house seemed established forever, that his great temptation came upon him, and he fell (2 Samuel 11:1-27). It was when Simon Peter had been so filled with the overwhelming sense of his Master’s grace and love that he had declared, "Even if I must die with Thee, yet I will not deny Thee," (Matthew 26:34) that the hour of his proving, and his bitter failure in the denial of Christ, drew near. It was when St Paul had been "caught up into the third heaven," and had heard "unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter," that there was given to him "a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, that he should not be exalted overmuch." (2 Corinthians 12:7) And it was when Jesus was "full of the Holy Ghost," the Spirit having descended and remaining on Him, that "immediately the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness, and He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan." And so it always is. When we are walking softly with God, and there is not much light about the path, and we rejoice, if we rejoice at all, "with trembling," we are comparatively safe from the tempter: but when we walk on the heights above, and stand in the sunlight of heaven, and the heart beats high with exalting raptures, danger is near. Close to those sunlit heights there yawn downwards at our feet black and awful precipices, and one false step may be fatal. Hours of solitude and of depression and of self-distrust are not our most perilous hours; it is when all heaven seems opened above us, and God to be very near to us, and His Spirit to be filling us with peace and joy, that we most need to watch and pray. The wilderness with its fierce temptation always comes near to the baptism with its heavenly vision; and from the conflict of the perfect man with the tempter the voice sounds afresh in our ears, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12) And now let us turn to the consideration of the place in which the temptation occurred. The only account given to us of the locality of the temptation is that it took place in "the wilderness," but where this wilderness was situated we do not know. It is true that there is a spot near to Jericho which has long been pointed out as the traditional locality of the temptation, and which has taken its name (The Quarantania) from the forty days’ fast in the wilderness, but there is no evidence whatsoever for the tradition, and the utmost that can be said in its favour is that the place is not unsuited to the solitary and awful conflict of our Lord with the tempter. A high and conical mountain, rising out of a lifeless and joy less desert plain, and looking over the waters of the Dead Sea, the sides of the mountain pierced with innumerable caves (which were once tenanted by hermits), and terminating in precipices on every side, is the traditional locality which has been identified with "the wilderness" of the Gospel history. But whether this were the true locality of the temptation, or whether, as for some reasons seem more probable, the Desert of Sinai was the scene of the conflict, there are lessons to be learnt from the nature of the locality itself, which are independent of its exact position.

It was, first of all, manifestly a place of absolute solitude.

We referred on a previous page to the fulness of the Holy Ghost which was bestowed on our Lord at His baptism, and to the revelation which in all probability this fulness of the Spirit gave to His human soul of the nature and glory of His Divine mission in the world. But if this were so, and if, as we believe, Jesus was "made in all points like as we are, yet without sin," solitude even apart from temptation would become a necessity to Christ after such a revelation. He would be led by the instincts and necessities of His own spiritual life to yearn for solitude that he might ponder the vast and glorious work on which He had entered at His baptism by John. It seems, indeed, as if all the noblest and most distinguished servants of God had been forbidden to begin their great work until they had passed through the discipline and strengthening of some such period of solitude and fellowship with God. Moses spent forty years in the silence of the desert before he was called by God to be the leader and lawgiver of Israel. (Acts 7:30) Elijah was alone with God for forty days and forty nights on Mount Horeb before coming forth to his final conflict with the priests of Baal, and with an idolatrous king, and an idolatrous people (1 Kings 19:8). St Paul tells us that after it had pleased God to "reveal His Son in me," "immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood," "but I went away into Arabia (Galatians 1:1-6; Galatians 1:17) and there is little, if any, doubt that the"Arabia"into which he retired was the same desert of Sinai where Moses had received the law and Elijah had heard" the still, small voice "of God." Standing,"to quote the words of the Bishop of Durham,"on the threshold of the new Covenant, he was anxious to look upon the birthplace of the old: that dwelling for a while in seclusion in the presence of ’ the mount that burned with fire,’ he might ponder over the transient glories of the ministration of death and apprehend its real purpose in relation to the more glorious covenant which was now to supplant it. [Commentary on Galatians, p. 89] Here, surrounded by the children of the desert, the descendants of Hagar the bondswoman, he read the true meaning and power of the law. In the rugged and barren region whence it issued he saw a fit type of that bleak desolation which it created and was intended to create in the soul of man."It may well have been to this same desert, already consecrated by the most sacred memories," Where all around, on mountain, sand, and sky, God’s chariot wheels have left distinctest trace,"that One infinitely greater than either Moses or Elias and to whom their homage on the Mount of Transfiguration testified that both law and prophets bowed before the supreme authority and glory of the Christ was led, that amidst its awful solitudes and surrounded by its sacred memories, He might meditate on the nature and the issues of that redeeming work which He had just begun, and to accomplish which He had come into the world. But if this solitude of the desert afforded to Christ a lengthened season for meditation on His great work, and for fellowship with His Father, we must not forget that it also deepened and aggravated the severity of the conflict which our Lord endured from the assault of the tempter. We know from our own experience the helpfulness of a human voice and a human heart by our side in times of the deepest spiritual darkness and trial: we know how even the simple entreaty by those we love, not to give way to temptation, often girds us with new strength, and decides the wavering will; and because Christ was in very deed our brother," the Son of Man,"He too must have felt the inspiration and the courage which human sympathy and human goodness afford to those who are sore beset of the devil. In another great crisis of our Lord’s life, the temptation which fell on Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and of which He Himself spoke as"the prince of this world coming"(John 14:30) to Him, He besought the three of His disciples whom He most trusted to" watch with him” (Matthew 26:38) as if He longed to feel the comfort and help of their companionship in His awful agony; but He asked, it may be added, in vain. The second temptation, like the first, was to be endured alone. Gethsemane was as truly a solitude to Christ as the wilderness. And in this, the first temptation of Christ, as in the second, He is withdrawn from all human companionship, and from the sound of human voices, and the touch of human love, that alone He may face the tempter, and in the dread conflict be cast on His God alone. How immeasurably this solitude added to the anguish and bitterness of the conflict we can only faintly imagine; that it left a dread of the same solitude occurring again we may see, not only from the pathetic appeal of which we have just spoken, which Jesus made to His disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, to "watch with Him," but from the sad remonstrance He addressed to His disciples concerning their desertion of Him in His hour of need, "The hour cometh, yea is come, that ye shall leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me." (John 16:32) But another purpose than that of solitude was secured by the wilderness being selected as the scene of Christ’s temptation; it necessitated the long period of fasting which preceded the final temptation. "In those days" and St Luke is referring to the forty days of the sojourn in the desert "He did eat nothing;" and in St Matthew we read, "When He had fasted forty days and forty nights He afterwards hungered." (Matthew 4:2; Luke 4:2) Now this fast had a double significance, first in regard to the relation Christ bore to the Jewish law, and then in relation to our Lord Himself.

Twice, and only twice before, is a fast similar to Christ’s recorded in the history of the Bible, and it is not a little significant that in both cases the fast took place in the wilderness, and in both cases it was a fast of the two great typical precursors of our Lord in the Jewish Church. Moses, the giver of the law, and who declared to the people, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him shall ye hearken," (Deuteronomy 18:15) had fasted in the wilderness forty days and forty nights; and Elijah, the typical prophet of the Old Covenant, had also fasted for the same time in the same desert (1 Kings 19:8). The first public act of the ministry of our Lord declares he has not come to "destroy, but to fulfil the law." By one significant act He binds Himself to the old at the very moment of inaugurating the new. But the fast had its special relation to Christ’s spiritual equipment for the conflict through which He was now to pass. In every age of the Church’s history, and in almost every religion on the face of the earth, the practice of fasting has been the witness to the supremacy of the higher over the lower nature in man, and to the victory which may be gained by the spirit over the affections and passions of the flesh. Christ Himself bore witness to the value of this discipline of the body by His fast in the wilderness. About to enter on His great work, and to encounter the fiery darts of the devil, He equips Himself alike for the work and for the conflict, by a long and deliberate subordination of His bodily to His spiritual nature, by the assertion of the utter insignificance of the demands of the flesh as compared with the deeper necessities of the spirit. He Himself is the great illustration of the meaning of His own words, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23) No doubt it is easy to say that even fasting has been abused, and has been made a foe rather than a friend to the spiritual life. When the subordination of the lower to the higher nature, which alone gives all its moral value to fasting, has been lost sight of; when fasting has been practised for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end higher than itself; when in stead of taking its place as one of the conditions of spiritual endowment for any special spiritual work, it has been made a counsel of perfection, and exalted into a good in itself, then fasting has lost its moral worth, and a protest against the fast may be really a higher moral act than the fast itself. But in the present day, and amid the growing luxuriousness of the age in which we live, it is possible that we may be in danger of forgetting that fasting has still its legitimate place in the culture of the spiritual life, and that there is a true as well as a false asceticism in the kingdom of God. The form which the denial of the lower nature may take is comparatively unimportant; whether we abstain literally for a time from our wonted food and drink, or whether we refuse to gratify any of the sinless desires of which every human life is full, matters but little so long as the moral significance of the self-denial is reached in the resolute subordination of the lower and fleshly nature to the higher, even at the cost of pain, and suffering, and the mortification of the flesh. If an apostle could say, "I buffet my body and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected," (1 Corinthians 9:27) how little can any of us afford to neglect that bodily discipline, that gymnastic of the lower nature, which St Paul tells is "profitable for a little," (1 Timothy 4:8) and the disregard of which has so often brought decay and death on the nobler life of the soul. High achievements in duty, continual victories over temptation and sin, the mastery of "the flesh" which besets us all, and without whose repression the spiritual life itself becomes enervated and luxurious, are not to be gained without much personal self-denial and pain, and without a daily self-discipline of which fasting ought to form at least a subordinate part.

One further point, moreover, in the locality chosen for the temptation remains to be noticed. St Mark alone preserves for us the graphic touch in the picture, "He was with the wild beasts." (Mark 1:13). It is difficult, perhaps, to put into words all the subtle suggestions of this pregnant phrase the imagination is often a better interpreter of Scripture than the logical reason but some glimpses at any rate of its meaning may be caught. Adam lost his regal control and dominion over the lower animals by his fall: Christ regained it by His victory. The crown of man’s lordship over the brute creation which had been lost by the first Adam is restored by the second. Adam turned Paradise into a desert by his sin: Jesus turns the desert into Paradise by His victory over sin and the wild beasts; and it adds inexpressible pathos to our Lord’s temptation if we think of Him not only as confronted by the great enemy that adversary whom Scripture itself compares to a "roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8) but as surrounded by a fierce and bloodthirsty crew of wild beasts of prey, each one intent on His destruction, as eager for His blood as the devil was for His soul, but kept in terror, and subdued by the majesty and might of Him who had come to regain that lordship of man over the creation, which at the beginning was "put into subjection under his feet," but which had been forfeited by the fall.

What deeper meanings there may be in this mysterious phrase, "He was with the wild beasts," we may never on earth fully know. We only know that for ourselves temptation is often nothing but the assault of what has been called "the wild beast in every man" on that which is best and holiest in the soul, and although in the pure and perfect soul of Jesus there never was aught but what was divine and gentle and good, yet even He "made in all points like unto His brethren," may have been permitted to feel the assault of those seductions to evil which in us arise from our lower and evil nature, but which came to Him from the temptations of the devil from without. When He was tempted to make the stones into bread that He might satisfy the cravings of the hunger of the body, He passed through a temptation which is the pregnant type of all those temptations which come to us from "the flesh," and which gives a new meaning to the graphic words of St Mark, "He was with the wild beasts." And these were in the wilderness. Christ had left the haunts of men far behind, but he had not left temptation and danger behind. Driven by the Spirit into the desert, He finds the devil waiting for Him even there: and so we learn the last, and perhaps the most vital lesson the scene of the temptation was meant to teach us. In every age of the Church’s history men and women have imagined that by fleeing from the world they could flee from temptation: and the "religious houses" of the Roman Catholic Church, its monasteries and convents, the cell of the anchorite or the recluse, and the pillow of the miserable devotee, all have been hailed as retreats from the world, because they were believed to be refuges from temptation. How deadly the disaster that has come to the spiritual life of those who thus imagined they could serve God best by breaking God’s own laws, it is needless to say; but against this foolish dream of escaping temptation by fleeing from the world, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is the divine and solemn warning. He found the devil in the deepest solitudes of the desert: and we shall find that he waits for us there too. To escape from temptation we must escape from life, for whether in the city or in the desert the tempter is near.