Oh man, Son of Man, You really don’t know how to grease the wheel do you? Just can’t give what needs to be let go, and still get what you’re aiming for all along, can you? No, you lock horns with the best of them, literally drawing lines in the sand. Sure you won this round, but after what happened to your best man, you should have known what would be coming for you.

It had been forty days. No food, no friends, just him with his thoughts, prayers, trying to sort out what had happened. His mind resembled the desert in which he’d spent these days, empty except for a dry wind that blew through. He gave meaning to retreat, get away and wrestle with what was stirring in the deepest parts of who you are and what it meant.

The Bulldozer Prophet: Prepare the Road

John seemed to be way ahead of him in that arena. Both men were now about 30 years old, cousins by relation. Both had heard their mothers’ stories of their births, foretold by angels, how they were conceived in reversals of natural order. John took on the role of prophet, calling people to repent, reverse the natural tendencies of their lives. He kept using the words of Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make the path straight.” John (called The Baptist) definitely was expecting a new thing, declaring a baptism that would happen with a power that burns, a power of holiness in God’s Spirit.

Jesus had to convince John to baptize him. JTB thought it should be the other way around. Jesus is going by the book here, wanting to be right, to fulfill or be filled with this power.

It happens. As John was bringing him up from the water, something like a dove landed upon him. A voice said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Whether this revelation was only known to Jesus or evident to the crowd around them could be argued, but it’s of no consequence. The human part of the “Word made flesh” was meeting his divine destiny. He was compelled to know what that would be. That’s what drove him to the desert. 

Better the Devil You Know

Forty days then with nothing but struggle. You’d think he could just settle it in his mind and go from there. It wasn’t going to be like that. To settle it with certainty, he had to prove it, test it, show himself and all in the heavenly realms who he was and who he wasn’t.

All heroes have an antagonist, one who pushes hard against the best parts of who you are and what your purpose is. Fitting then, God’s beloved Son would meet the total antithesis of who he was before he even got out of that hot place, a kind of hell. Not surprisingly, the great tempter appears.

Desert Dueling

By this time, it had been forty days since he had eaten. An obvious weakness, it’s an easy play for his enemy. “Son of God? Change this stone into bread!” But as one schooled in the ancient Scriptures, Jesus retorts, “People need more than bread for their life.” 

Ok, then, his adversary makes it personal. The vision gets larger. Show him a life-ending that doesn’t mean sacrifice and pain. Jump off the highest point of the Temple itself, and let the angels hold you from the fall. You’ll have the people in the palm of your hand, and you don’t have to end your life with a cross full of trouble.

Except Jesus knows what his enemy wants, to try to beat him now before they get to the place where this adversary will lose. With implied threat, Jesus comes back, “Do not test the Lord your God.”

Then go for the glory. Showing him the whole world in a vision, his nemesis makes his deal. Just worship me, make me your God, and it’s yours. But it’s an easy turn down; Jesus rejects it all with a basic commandment, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

Every hero has an antagonist who embodies trouble, and the two will meet more than once. Ultimately, the devil backed down this time. Our hero has not fallen, but having been to hell and back, he is wounded sorely enough for angels came to care for him. Even so, the victory was made in not succumbing to the wisdom of the world, an offer to grasp power at any price, even if it was not pure.

Instead, Jesus battled for the will of God, the life of the poor in spirit, the meek and lowly, the pure in heart peacemakers who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake in the kingdom of heaven. 

The devil didn’t win this one but still struck the final blow. John was arrested. The fight was on. Jesus began to preach. He used John's own words:

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:1-11