This message is the beginning of a four week series on the temptation of Christ found in Matthew 3:16-4:11. After Jesus’ baptism, Scripture says that the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. The last thing that happened before He was led into the wilderness was that God spoke “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” From that moment Jesus spent 40 days in fasting and prayer being prepared for His time of temptation.
There is a very important place in all of our lives that we often overlook as unimportant or resist as too difficult; it is the place between where we have been and where we are going. We have a tendency to look back and to look forward but to neglect the place where we stand right now. Jesus was led to a place and time of preparation before He defeated the temptations of Satan. Israel was led to the wilderness for a time of cleansing and preparation before they would enter the Promised Land, you and I are often led to places that seem like a wilderness to us, these places are not places of judgment, or places of uselessness, they are places of discipline that prepare us for the destination that God has promised us.
Over the next few weeks we will look closely as Jesus’ victory over temptation that He did not merely win for Himself but has given to each of us. We are victorious when we are prepared in prayer and when we abide in Christ. When Jesus is preeminent in our lives we have the power and the vision to overcome the tempter. We don’t need more effort, more of our own will or even more knowledge, we need more surrender to Jesus and more trust in God and His plans for us. The voice of God rang loudly in the ears of Jesus as He was tempted, I believe that it was the key to victory in the wilderness and will be the key to victory in each of our places of temptation. I pray that we will not resist or neglect the wilderness but that we would come out victorious, increased and fully dependent upon God to fight every battle and to win every victory.