Jesus Assaulted by Satan
,^^“”^k IRECTIyY after the baptism of Jesus, doubtless immediately after, He
was commanded by the Spirit to repair to the wilderness. Matthew
^L M says:” Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
^“^”^ tempted of the devil.” Mark says: ‘•’ And immediately the Spirit
driveth Him into the wilderness; and He was there in the wilderness forty days
tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts.” L,uke says: “And Jesus
being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into
the wilderness.”
Though using different expressions, we may regard the testimony of the three gospel writers as the same, the employment of the word drove instead of /^^ being illustrative of Mark’s greater enthusiasm and forcibleness of statement.
As Moses and Elijah each spent forty days in fasting, as a preparatory act for their prophetic office, so Jesus went into the wilderness for a like period and under like conditions to bring Himself into a communion with His heavenly Father. If John did not pass any time in famishment, he practiced other forms of self-denial in the waste regions of Judea, as many other prophets had done before him, so that it may have been to conform to the early experiences of the distinguished prophets of Israel that Jesus was led into the wilderness to undergo not only a fasting of forty days but the assaults of Satan also. Having been sent to the world in form incarnate. He must be subjected to all the harsh experiences of life in order that He might be an example before the world, that our understanding of His sacrifices might be perfect, and our appreciation of His sufferings thorough. Thus it was, for a twofold purpose, that Jesus came up out of the Jordan waters with the sign of the Messiahship upon Him, and repaired to the wilderness to devote a period to prayer and pious meditation, an act which He repeated many times afterwards, when accumulations of trouble became too heavy for Him to bear.
What lonely, desolate, bleak wastes of beetling rocks, shelving precipices, gloomy caverns, and dreary deserts, distinguish some of the hills and mountains near the Jordan! Nothing green except a sparse growth of chaparral on the mountain sides, while the peaks are hoary with limestone scoured by pelting storms, and the valleys, parched nearly all the seasons, are strewn with sands that quiver under a torrid sun. There was shade in the many caves, but it was the shade of gloom, of terror, of inexpressible melancholy, whose oppressive silence
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was broken by no other sounds than the flutter of bat, the growl of leopard, the laugh of hyena or the roar of lion. Night pillowed her head in the valley, and day woke in dread on the mountain. And here in this barren solitude tarried Jesus, with the divine light hallowing and illuminating His surroundings, with the joy of holy companionship filling His heart, and comforting assurances from His Father raising His soul. The days must have flown by in rapid succession, for time escapes on nimble wings with those reveling in a rare delight. And the ecstatic pleasure of sweet communion with God must have made Jesus forgetful of all other things, until exhausted nature came knocking at the temple of His weakened energies, to admonish Him of the need of a renewed vitality. And at the end of forty days He was ahungered.
The Temptation.
Feeble, faint, completely enerated by His long fasting, and doubly unstrengthened by a sudden relaxation following the awakening from His spiritual, to a realization of His material surroundings. He was in a condition when the mind is least capable of resistance to temptation. And now came Satan, with smooth speech and persuasive tongue, to deceive and to bribe our Lord. His suave insinuation even in the most repulsive guise had won the confidence of Eve, and remembering that God had promised that the Son of a woman should bruise the serpent’s head, he felt his opportunity was now come to again thwart the will of the Almighty. What form he assumed we know not, but recognizing Jesus as the true Son of God, and knowing the purpose of His ministry, Satan must have taken an angelic shape, since he used scriptural texts as his arguments.
Seeing Jesus faint with hunger, he said: “If thou be the Son of God, command these stones that they be made bread.” But nearly famished as He was, Jesus saw that the request was made only to test Him, or to tempt Him, and He therefore quick replied,” Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Or in other words, material food is no more important to the body than is spiritual food to the soul. Thus Satan’s appeal to the physical necessities which oppressed Jesus was met by a prompt denial of desire through the fullness of a grace that lifts the soul above bodily needs.
Being thus repulsed in his first attack, Satan thought next to make an appeal to Christ’s vanity, so taking Him to a pinnacle of the Temple the wily adversary ofiered a second temptation by saying,” If thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence, for it is written. He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up.” Or, to use modern phraseology,” Now, if you are really the Son of God, which mafiy must doubt, give an exhibition of your power, by leaping from this great height and floating, like bird on folding wing, to the ground, alighting harmless before the priests, the rulers and concourse of people below, you can at once demonstrate your divinity, and your claims to the Messialisliip will be acknowledged.”
But again Jesus rebukes the tempter, by saying,” Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Christ was commissioned to perform a certain work through preordained means which involved great personal sacrifices, hence He would not attempt to anticipate the will of the Father who sent Him, or evade any requirement or condition that God had imposed. Christ was not only to be made a sacrifice, but a teacher also, and the time had therefore not yet come for an exhibition of His divine power, even if desire to manifest Himself to the people in such an ostentatious manner had been really entertained. And so the second temptation
MOUNTAIN OF OUARANTANA, WHKKK THE TEMPTATION IS SAID TO HAVE TAKEN PI.ACE.
was overcome through the same spiritual insight, aside from divine agency, that enabled Jesus to resist Satan’s first appeal.
The Vision on Quarantana. Not yet discouraged, however, but with characteristic persistence, the devil for a third time assaults the citadel of the Holy One. Hunger and vanity might be resi.sted, though both are great temptations which may only be overcome by the power of a righteous conscience; but will a promise to gratify all worldly ambition be refused .so easily? Satan is determined to see. So he took Jesus to the top of a very high mountain, so lofty that from its apex he might look down upon all the kingdoms of the world; upon the palaces and splendors that lay eastward and westward, and .southward and northward; upon the crowns that circled the brows of ever>’ king, and the fleets that sailed on every sea, and the wealth that was garnered in every treasury, and the power and aggrandizement of every nation, and all this aggregation of splendor, of riches, of authority, of supreme sovereignty, Satan offered to give to Jesus if He would but renounce God, if He would fall down in worshipful feeling before the Prince of Darkness. It was an offer of compromise; a bribe intended to buy Christ from executing the commission for which He had been sent into the world.
As there is no mountain so high as to afford a view of any considerable part of the world, and notwithstanding that the peak of Quarantana is pointed out as the lofty spot where this temptation occurred, we must still regard thf incident either in a figurative sense, or that Satan was able to conjure up a visn n, before the sight of Jesus, of all the world’s principalities. From the apex of Quarantana may be viewed a long stretch of the Jordan and its sinuous valley, while breaking the horizon beyond lies a range of mountains, and between, the Judean wilderness, the glistening Dead Sea and Mount of Olives, but above all of this, rising like a mirage, might have been a glorious vision of the world’s possessions, like John’s apocalyptic view of the celestial city, or Elijah’s perception of the heavenly cohort.
But whatever may have been the circumstances, whether material or spiritual, whether ocular or illusory, the lesson is no less striking for its grandness of illustration. True it is, that Satan had no ownership in any of these things which he offered to bestow, while Christ, as joint-heir of God and hence the Creator, was master of all, and to whom every creature is answerable, and who are only tenants of His domain. But the temptation was a sufferance of God, similar to that to which Job was subjected, and was permitted as a lesson to the world illustrative of the temporary subjection of Jesus to the conditions and limitations which surround all men, and of His holiness not as the Son of God, but the Son of Man. Therefore, as the Son of Man He answered:” Get thee Hence, Satan: for it is written. Thou shalt worship the Eord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”
“It is written,” is the Eord’s inti eduction to every rebuttal of His to the wily suggestions of the tempter, Satan. He enters into no argument or parley of any kind, but fights the adversary with the divine weapon which St. Paul recommends to all saints, when he warns them to put on the whole armor of God, and that is, the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
Understanding the futility of further effort to allure Jesus from the way of righteousness, the arch adversary spread his wings and departed, leaving his triumphant enemy on the mountain top, to whom angels now came flocking down to pay their homage in songs of victory and praise.
Jesus Returns to John.
After forty days of hunger and temptation Jesus was ministered to by angels and then He left the mountain peak and went to Bethabara, an ancient ford on the Jordan — though John says it was beyond the Jordan — where the Baptist was preaching. At the time of His visit to the place there was a delegation of priests and Eevites, sent probably by the Sanhedrim, who had just arrived to propound certain questions to John as to who he was and by whose authority he was preaching and baptizing. The claim had been set up by many that he was indeed the Christ long promised, and by others that he was Elias (Elijah), while yet others rejected him as nothing more than an enthusiast. But the general opinion was so favorable that he might have declared himself the Messiah without meeting a violent opposition. But John denied being either Christ or Elijah, claiming no pre-eminence whatever above the humblest, and declaring himself to be only an instrument,” the plow that goes before the «ower,” the crier that precedes the royal coming, the courier of announcement. And when the Pharisees of the delegation asked him why then did he baptize, he answered them thus: “I baptize with water, but (recognizing Christ among the multitude) there standeth one among you whom ye know not. He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe latchet I am unworthy to unloose.” This answer was a declaration that the ceremony of baptism as performed by him was but a rite of consecration to a holy service, an acknowledgment of sin, and a preparation for an acceptance of Him who had been sent as a Saviour for the world, and for the regeneration of Israel.
What effect John’s answers had on the messengers sent by the Sanhedrim we know not, but as Christ was not revealed to them it is most seemly to believe that they either failed to comprehend John’s words, or else left him feeling that he was but a visionary man whose mind was distracted by delusions.
On the following day, seeing Jesus approach, John hailed Him as the Son of
God, and to his followers he said:” Behold the Eamb of God which taketh away
the sin of the world,” and so particularized Him to the crowd both b)^ description
and giving testimony to the seal of Holiness which he had witnessed set upon
Jesus at His baptism, that thereafter His identification as the Messiah of John’s
pronouncement was unmistakable. At this point the active ministry of Jesus
begins.
The First Disciples.
From the language of the text John’s acknowledgment and identification of Christ seems to have been addressed to but two of his disciples, but we would rather believe, by the knowledge we have of John’s character, that the declaration was made to all those who stood about him and to whom he was preaching with such power and goodly effect.
But at the side of John were two of his particular friends, or early converts, who had left their fishing nets to hear the words of warning that John was tittering to such great crowds. One of these was named Andrew, a brother of
Simon Peter, who will be mentioned frequently hereafter, and the other, though not mentioned by name, was probably John, a son of Zebedee. As Jesus came up to them they inquired with much anxiety His place of residence, to which He made no other answer than a request for them to” conie and see.” And so the two followed Him to His temporary abode and were under the witchery of His magic voice, and the charm of His infinite love, and the magnetism of His gracious presence for a space of two hours. What the subject of their conversation was we may surmise by the results which immediately followed. Andrew left his newly-found Master only to hurry off and find his brother, Peter, who was still with the Baptist at Bethabara. The search was an anxious one, for the crowd was great, but Andrew at last catches sight of him and rushing up with bursting joy, he cries out, “Brother, brother, we have found the Messiah.” And he brought Peter to Jesus, who received him to fellowship, but gave him a new name, Cephas — a stone, — because he became as firm and unyielding in righteousness as a rock.
The Doubts of Nathanael.
John, the beloved disciple, and Andrew and Simon Peter, were so soulfully delighted, and so filled with worshipful reverence for Jesus that as He journeyed back to Galilee they followed Him, holding sweet converse on the way and becoming enlightened as to the divine character and holy purpose of the Messiah; and as they traveled along the highway they met a friend of Andrew and Peter, a fisherman of Bethsaida, named Philip, who being called, joined the party and became an accepted disciple. Philip was likewise so impressed with the Godly attributes of the Divine Master that coming upon a friend named Nathanael, who was sitting beneath a fig tree that stood by the wayside, or possibly before his house in Cana, he besought him also to join them, telling him of the power, the glory and the grace of Jesus, who he assured him was the promised Messiah. Nathanael not only doubted the claim made by Philip, but was even inclined to cast a slur upon the holy Nazarene, for, said he, in reply,” Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But to this Philip only answered, “Come and see.” There was something, either in the appearance of Christ, or a curiosity to discover the cause of Philip’s infatuation with the stranger, that prompted Nathanael to accept Philip’s invitation, and as he approached, Jesus said to those that were with Him, “Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” Probably Nathanael (surnamed Bartholomew) overheard the expression; or else Jesus accosted him by name, which so surprised him that he askd,” Whence knowest Thou me?” Then did Jesus answer him in such manner that Nathanael acknowledged Him as the Son of God, and the King of Israel, and thenceforward served as a faithful disciple, though the gospel record thereafter refers to him i^ODgUudtt East from Ureenwicb
^uk»$M,m.f,
never as Nathanael, but as Bartholomew, who was afterwards a preacher of the Christian doctrine in Arabia Felix, long after the death of His Master.