Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...37

Jesus, filled and lead by the Spirit, spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. Even if Satan intended to lead Jesus the Son of Man to sidetrack into sin, Jesus the Son of God could not be tempted by evil. This experience proved in practical terms the declaration by the Father concerning Jesus. Jesus passes the testing.

How did Jesus repel the advances of the devil? By quoting Scripture. He passed His testing by being well-versed and totally dependent on the Word of God. He carried out His confession and "live[d]...on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Deuteronomy 8.3 quoted in Matthew 4.4 NIV.)

At each suggestion of Satan, Jesus confesses an appropriate passage. Rather than believe a lie, Jesus trusts to the Truth of God's Word. Like Mary in the Magnificat Jesus has fully integrated the Scriptures and they flow out naturally and fittingly to the situation at hand. He has hidden the "word in [His] heart" (Psalm 119.11 NIV.)

Paul, a first-generation follower of Jesus, teaches us of the importance of the Word in our struggle against the devil. In Ephesians 6.17 he refers to the Word as "the sword of the Spirit." Of all the armor of God discussed in this letter, only the sword provides offensive weaponry. The rest protects passively. The writer of Hebrews* also uses the analogy of a sword to describe the effectiveness of the Word. "For the Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword..." (Hebrews 4.12 NIV.)

We who claim to be Christ-followers must be people of The Book. We must commit to reading it. So very few have read it cover to cover. We must commit to memorizing it. Hiding it in our hearts stores up the truth for the day of testing. We must have so integrated our thinking (meditation) and living (application) to the Scripture that when under pressure, it oozes out of us. Certainly the Jesus we follow did so and it showed in the wilderness.

*The unknown writer could have been Paul, Apollos, Priscillla or anyone. This is the only book in all of Sacred Scripture to which I apply the phrase "the writer of." Most often that phrase connotes a textual/historic critisism view of Scripture that undermines its inerrant and infallible, fully God-breathed nature by asserting the authorship, and thus authority, of the document is questionable.