Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...2

Lent, 40 days of prayer and fasting leading up to Resurrection Sunday began yesterday. This journey of self-denial, discipline and contemplation calls for reflection and "mile-markers" along the way.

Today I begin with Jesus in the wilderness of temptation. This experience lasted forty days as well. So I follow the Lord there.

Matthew, in presenting the King, records His time in the wilderness in chapter 4 of his Gospel.

The parallels to the Wilderness wonderings of Israel are striking. First, Matthew has previously quoted Hosea 11.1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son." Then Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea to enter the Wilderness. Jesus had just passed through the waters of Jordan in baptism. Both Jesus and Israel were lead by God into what seemed like a detour from a more direct route to goal-achievement. Jesus fasts forty days and nights. Then He is tempted. This 40 days in the wilderness calls to mind the 40 years Israel wandered in the wilderness. The quotes from the Penteteuch Jesus uses as defense all come from the Wilderness Years.
Israel's wilderness experience was the incubator for the formation of a sovereign nation out of an extended family of slaves. The experience did pull the people together and prepare them for nationhood. But they failed to maximize the potential. They failed God. After a generational reload, they failed God again.

First we see Jesus, more hungry than you and I have ever been, being tempted to make stones into bread -- to satisfy His physical need. Israel complained of their hunger and potential starvation. They reminisced about onion soup in the slave camps. They threatened revolt against God and His man Moses. God provided manna "bread from heaven" to meet their need.

Jesus does not complain or immediately supply His real need. He states the lesson offered to Israel, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." As he would later teach in John 6 we should seek God and not His gifts.

Second, the tempter recites God's offer of protection for His Anointed One (often Israel, often Jesus.) Jesus counters by quoting the lesson from another 40-years-in-the-wilderness moment. "Do not put the LORD your God to the test." For they had put him to the test when the water ran low at Meribah. They asked, demanded to know if God was with them or not. Moses told them to stop testing God. Later David warned another generation not to harden their hearts as they did in testing God at Massah and Meribah.

Jesus would not put God or His promise to a test. He would not demand a sign. He would trust God's nature and Word.

Lastly comes the matter of worship. In the Wilderness Israel worshipped a golden calf they had made. At the foot of the mountain where Moses was meeting with the True and Living One, who alone deserves worship, Israel broke 3 of the first table of commands that would make up the Decalogue. Moses shattered the Stones to symbolize their utter failure.

Jesus quotes the lesson from the Calf incident, "Worship the LORD your God and serve Him only!" He would not offer to anyone or thing, what belonged to God alone. He would later teach that His followers must not give to Caesar what belongs to God.

Jesus redeemed what Israel forfeited in the wilderness. Immediately after this, He begins calling His 12 disciples to replace Israel's failed 12 tribes. More faithful than Moses, He begins forming the new Israel -- people who follow Him in allegiance to, trust in and desire for the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.