Jesus: Tested

“You just don’t understand.”

Children say it to their parents. Sufferers say it to the people trying to comfort them. Sinners say to those trying to comfort them.

It’s true that at times we feel misunderstood. There are even times in our lives when we feel that our situation is so unique, no one could possibly understand. No one can understand my temptation, so I’ll hide it. No one can understand my suffering, so I’ll isolate myself. No one can understand my choices, so I’ll distance myself.

And unfortunately, sometimes it’s true that there are people that don’t understand us, and don’t seek to understand us. Have you experienced the frustration of a loved one who doesn’t understand you, doesn’t seek to understand you, but thinks he does? And so he leaves your concerns unaddressed, your thoughts ignored, your fears dismissed.

A friend who doesn’t seek to understand will be unable to sympathize with you. Gentle sympathy and tenderhearted love grows in the garden of understanding.

Now we’re here to read and study about Jesus together. And what we’re going to encounter today is someone who understands. In two simple verses, we are going to meet a savior who has endured attack, has endured deprivation, has endured terrifying circumstances, has endured temptation -- in other words, I savior who understands your life, your struggles, your pain, your fear, your worry, your concerns.

And listen -- this is important -- he understands because he experienced.

That helps, doesn’t it? There’s a difference between someone who knows suffering and pain because they’ve seen it, and someone who knows suffering and pain because they’ve lived it.

The reason Charles Spurgeon was a great preacher is because he had suffered greatly. The man dealt with all manner of intense opposition, with indescribable despair, with extraordinary tragedy. He preached as a man in need of comfort to people in need of comfort.

We find that when we look into the eyes of our savior and tell him our fears, worries, concerns, frustrations, failures, and temptations -- he, with eyes big with sympathy, says, “I know.” And he does know, because of his experience.

Mark 1:12-13.

“The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” The Spirit did this. It links back to what happened in the previous section when the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and remained on him. This all demonstrates that Jesus is going to live as a man empowered by the Holy Spirit. He, perfectly attuned to the Father’s will for his life, filled with the Spirit to enable him for ministry, heads to the wilderness.

We have to simply note something here. Jesus has two natures. He is divine, and after the incarnation, he is human. He has both natures. During his first coming, to use Paul’s language in Philippians 2:7, “he emptied himself.” What does that mean? It doesn’t mean he ceased to be God. It doesn’t mean he gave up his divinity. It means that he laid aside his use of his divine power and lived like a man.

Jesus was God, but he lived on earth from his human nature, like a man. His life is lived -- aside from time to time he taps into his divine power and does miracles to prove his claims -- using the same resources available to you and me. He was a devoted student of the Scriptures-- he had the Word of God, and he was filled with the Spirit. What do we have? The Scriptures and the Spirit.

So the spirit empowers Jesus, living in his human nature, for ministry. Listen, Jesus is living as a man, as a Spirit-filled man.

Our first point: Jesus understands human nature.

In fact, all throughout the book of Mark, we see Jesus having very human experiences. In 4:38 he’s tired and sleeping through a storm. He’s hungry in 11:12. In 1:41 he feels pity. In 3:5 he feels righteous anger and grief.

Romans 8:3 says that God sent his own son “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” What does that mean? It means that the body Jesus had was not a pre-curse body, like Adam’s before the Fall. The body Jesus took was a post-curse body; that is, it was susceptible to pain, to hunger, to sickness, to disease, to exhaustion, and to death. Jesus lived as a man. It wasn’t merely that he took the appearance of a man, but lived as God, and it only appeared that he suffered.

No -- lived lived as a man, from his human nature, in a body under creation’s curse.

You ever been so tired? Jesus understands that. You ever been sick and weak? Jesus knows what it’s like. Have you ever been sad, been sorrowful, been in pain? Jesus understands human nature. Jesus lived as a man.

Now this goes further. I want you to notice a word that’s repeated in these 2 verses. “Wilderness, wilderness, wild.” Jesus goes into the wilderness.

I mentioned last week that the distance between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south was roughly 70 miles. Jesus goes somewhere between there. There are no cities nearby, no roads, no inns, no Motel 6s.

Why is this significant? Why does he emphasize the wildness of where Jesus is? After creation, Adam is placed in a beautiful garden. Adam and Eve were commissioned to rule the earth and subdue it; Adam specifically was given the work of cultivating and keeping the garden. What Adam and Eve were supposed to do was spread the verdant beauty of the luscious garden, so that no part of the world would be wilderness. But what happened? When they sinned, God cursed the ground. Genesis 3:17 “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground…”

In other words, their commission was to work and keep and cultivate the garden, but they would not be able to do it because of the cursed ground. And so wilderness in the Bible is nearly always associated with sin, with temptation, with curse, and with judgment. In Deuteronomy, the wilderness is described as “great and terrible;” it’s described as a place of “flinty rock” and “fiery serpents and scorpions.” It’s a “howling waste.” It was so bad that after Moses brought the people out from Egypt into the wilderness, they said, “What did you bring us out to die?”

To highlight this reality, Mark includes this little detail: “and he was with the wild animals.” Wild animals are certainly a result of the curse, aren’t they? In paradise, Adam brought all the animals to himself, named them, they were tame and good. Animals became wild after the fall, after the curse. There are passages in the prophets that speak of the wilderness that had been a “haunt of jackals” shall instead be green with grass and water when the kingdom comes. When the world is restored, the wilderness -- the wild -- is no more. The earth will be brought into submission and the beauty of the world will be restored to its original design.

Now what kind of animals would we find in the Judean wilderness? Lions, leopards, bears, wolves, jackals, hyenas, and foxes. That tiny detail actually adds a lot to the scene and makes it much more graphic, doesn’t it? Nightfall would be terrifying. No walls of safety, no gates to close, no security. The Son of God sleeps under a tree, or next to a bush, or in a cave. Howls in the night, nocturnal predators stalking. You don’t sleep well in these conditions.

It’s not mentioned here in Mark, but in the other gospels we learn he’s fasting for these 40 days. He would drink water, but he wouldn’t eat, and by 40 days the effects would have been excruciating. After 2 weeks without food, his body would have begun to break down. He went nearly 6 weeks like this, and the difficulty of the landscape, he is experiencing the worst this fallen world has to offer. Jesus didn’t only suffer on the cross; this would have been terrible.

Jesus understands the curse.

In other words, Mark is emphasizing that by going into the wilderness, Jesus is going behind enemy lines. He’s headed straight for the heart of the darkness. He’s going to experience the worst that this cursed world has to offer. He’s not just going to dip his toe into the cursed world, he’s diving in head first. Why? Because this enables him to be sympathetic toward us. This is a way that Jesus says, “I love you, I want to understand you, I want to know what this is like, and I want you to know that I am here, I am listening, I care, I know.”

You see, he doesn’t just experience hunger, he experiences the worst of hunger. He doesn’t just experience being tired, but the worst kind of prolonged exhaustion. Not just sleeplessness, but the worst kind of nightmarish terror in the beast-filled wilderness. And just not an enemy, but the worst enemy, the most evil enemy, the most powerful enemy there is: Satan.

That brings us to our third point:

Jesus understands temptation.

Verse 13: “And he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan.”

So as he’s in this howling wilderness, hungry and tired, in danger of wild animals, he encounters a person much darker, much more dangerous than any wild predator. Satan’s there. Satan’s there tempting him.

Satan -- the name literally means “adversary.” The word is used in a general sense in the Old Testament to refer to an enemy, one who’s a hindrance. Remember when Balaam is trying to go, but his donkey won’t move because there’s an angel there? When the angel speaks he says, “Behold I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me” (Num. 32:22). That word “oppose” is Satan -- I have come to Satan you.

It became used as a proper name, as in Job, when Satan is described as among the sons of God, as one who accuses Job of having a false righteousness. In Zechariah 3:1 he accuses Joshua for his past sins. He’s an opposer of God, he stands in the way of God, he hates God’s people, God’s plans, and is restlessly devoted to destroy them.

He’s called the tempter, Beelzebul, the enemy, Belial, the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the adversary, the deceiver of the whole world, the fathers of lies, a murderer, an accuser, and perhaps, to sum them all up, the evil one.

In the gospel of John, three different times Jesus calls him the “ruler of this world.” What do we see Satan doing? He’s tempting Jesus. This is what Satan does -- he tempts. He’s the tempter.

It’s important to distinguish what temptation is. And I think it’s important to clarify what’s happening to Jesus. It’s helpful to think about two kinds of temptations: external and internal.

External temptations are a result of living in a fallen world. These are the circumstances that come into your life that present opportunities to sin. Even if you’re living in wisdom, pursuing holiness, and seeking to obey the Lord, you will always encounter external temptation.

Your boss asks you to cut some corners at work to get something done a little faster. A billboard presents an image meant to excite sexual desire. Your friends at school threaten to bully you if you tell the truth.

Now external temptations lead to internal temptations. An internal temptation is a desire.

Turn to James 1:13-15 to see how this works: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

He’s talking about internal temptation -- and he makes it clear that internal temptation starts with desires of the heart. Now, he does not say that the desires are wrong. To have desires for food, for comfort, for convenience, for pleasure -- these are not wrong. But look at what they can do: these desires can turn against you and “lure and entice you.”

I’m sure you’ve experienced this. Your body is tired and you desire sleep. This is not a bad desire. And then you’re children won’t stay in bed, or your spouse wants to stay up and talk, or you have a pile of papers to grade -- and these things that get in the way of your desire to sleep spawn sinful attitudes -- impatience, anger, or pouting.

Not all desires are sin, but desires “lure” and “entice.”

Now what is happening to Jesus?

Matthew and Luke both record three different temptations -- Mark doesn’t, which I think gives indication that Jesus wasn’t simply tempted three times. He was tempted all throughout the 40 days. He was the bull’s eye of the armies of darkness. They couldn’t destroy him when he was born -- though they tried. And they’re back at it again as he launches his ministry. He’s experiencing excruciating external temptation.

We know from other passages, Satan is tempting him to doubt God, to disobey him, to drift from his mission, to skip past the cross and go straight to the kingdom. The wilderness presents a temptation to be fearful; the wild beasts howling in the dark present a temptation to be anxious. It’s a showdown, and Satan brings the big-guns. He’s going to set before him external temptations that would deviate.

You ask, is he experiencing internal temptation?

We do know this: he’s experiencing human desire. Jesus is hungry -- that’s a desire for food. Jesus is exhausted, that’s a desire for rest. Jesus is physically feeble, that would include a desire for comfort. All throughout Mark we encounter a human Jesus with human desires.

So Jesus, as he faces all manner of external temptation, his human internal desires are aroused. He would want food, he would want sleep, he would want comfort, he would want peace, he would want safety.

But here’s the difference between Jesus and us -- his desires never turned sinful. His desire for food never made him hangry. His desire for sleep never made him grumpy. His desire for safety never made him doubt God’s provision. At every point he was tempted, his natural human desires were active, but he had a greater desire that ruled his heart and enabled him to say no to all temptation: a desire to please his father.

We need to point out something here. Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus came, but Matthew does. Matthew 4:1, which says explicitly “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus heads to the wilderness because this is part of his redemptive mission. He needs a face off with the enemy.

Listen -- Jesus wasn’t lured there. Jesus wasn’t trying to escape him by heading into the wild, but Satan found him there anyway. This is part of the plan of God. Jesus is on a mission.

Now see this: Jesus must do this as part of his saving work. What Jesus is doing, he is doing to accomplish our salvation. 1 John 3:8 says “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” To destroy the devil’s works he needs to demonstrate a superior strength, he has to be indomitable, he has to confront the power of Satan and overcome it. And that’s precisely what he’s doing here. The Spirit has led him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan so he could demonstrate his power of him and resist temptation.

But also this -- in doing this, he suffers immensely, and in his suffering he is able to help those who suffer like him: Hebrews 2:18 “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Watch him there in your mind's eye. He’s dizzy from deprivation. He stumbles from weakness. And though he’s all you can see, there are spiritual realities at play -- Satan is launching attack after attack, angels are serving him, defending him, protecting him, the Spirit dwells within him, enabling him to stay true to the mission.

Jesus understands temptation! He knows what it’s like. He’s been through it. Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

What a Savior.

He understands my humanity. He knows we’re frail, because he became frail. He knows we’re weak, because he became weak. And listen, this is why he gives the Holy Spirit. The only way for us to resist sin is to resist in the power of the Holy Spirit.

1 John 4:4 “for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

Who dwells within you, Christian? Look: Colossians 1:27 “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 3:3 “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

The tempted and tried Christ, who overcame Satan, who did not fall into sin, now lives in you. We do not have to submit to temptation. Do not believe in irresistible temptation! There’s no such thing. The moment you think, “I can’t resist this temptation” you’re telling yourself a lie. Jesus has broken sin’s dominion in our lives and enabled us to say no. Jesus knows your human weakness, and has provided divine power to enable you to obey.

He understands the curse of this world. He faced want, sickness, disease, and death. Jesus is not a stoic Buddha, indifferent to the pain in the world. Jesus is the only one who has perfectly followed “Blessed are those who mourn.” He entered into the dark, he faced the curse, he faced hunger and exhaustion and pain and vulnerability.

Listen, God does not laugh at your weakness. He does not smirk at your brokenness. Our transcendent God has come near, to live under a curse, to redeem his people.

He understands my temptation. He’s sympathetic toward me. He is tender toward me. And if all the world doesn’t understand me, he does. He knows my secret struggles, he knows my inner turmoil, he knows my suffering, he knows my temptation.

This short vignette of Jesus temptation reminds us of that since our savior was tested, he understands, and because he understands, he can sympathize.

So if you’re not a Christian, trust him now. Trust him to save you, heal you, forgive you. If you’re a doubter, see his wilderness temptation and ponder the length he goes to demonstrate his attentiveness to your struggles. If you’re self-righteous, be reminded that your savior was tempted, and be set free to admit your own temptations, instead of hiding them. And let all of us look to him with humble awe, know he is a wonderful shepherd who knows us perfectly.