Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...16

Jesus days in the Wilderness center around temptation. I have looked at the 40 years testing of Israel in a wilderness and the temptation of our First Parents. Jesus has done in His time of temptation what neither of these had done. He remained faithful to the Father and overcame the Tempter.

1 John 2.15-16 adds another dimension to the discussion. "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world." Temptation presents the tempted with two alternatives -- the love of the Father  or the love of the world.

In the temptation days in the wilderness we see Jesus deal with the three-fold world. The tempter presents each of these three aspects in a separate trial. Jesus overcomes each in turn and remains rooted in the love of the Father.

...the Lust of the Flesh...

Jesus fasts 40 days and night. His hunger boarders on literal starvation. His body needs to eat. He might not survive without it. Eating is essential for existance. God designed the human body with safeguards against starvation. Hunger pangs, fat absorption and finally muscle depletion war against starvation.

Jesus flesh desires food. God gave that desire. Life demands fulfillment of that desire. The desire for food ranks as neither morally good or bad. To a starving Jesus, mini-boulders start looking like mini-buns. The tempter whispers, "You could make them into bread..."

But life in this world centers on satifying the desires of the body. We live at our lower, animal level when life's direction depends on our desires. How many of our choices focus solely on self-satisfaction.

Instead Jesus chooses the love of the Father and His Word as His sustainance. In His choosing He frees us to choose above our base desires and choose our real satisfaction -- the love of the Father. Because He overcomes His life-and-death need, He strengthens us to overcome our not-life-and-death desires. Money, power, sex -- the big three-- don't have the strenth of food to the starving. We can overcome through Him.