Week 1 –Why the Wilderness?

“Matthew 4: 1-2—Mark 1: 12-13a—Luke 4: 1-2”

After Jesus’ baptism, Mark tells us he “immediately” was driven into the wilderness where he would be 40 days. All 3 gospels add the reason for this trip: “to be tempted by the devil,” and Matthew and Luke also add that he fasted for 40 days.  After 40 days, Matthew and Luke tell us Satan tempted him with three specific temptations.  

Since we are following Jesus in ‘real-time’, we have 40 days to consider all the aspects of this period that only gets a few verses in each Gospel. Here are the questions we will consider over the next 40 days:  Why was Jesus “driven by the Holy Spirit” to the wilderness for 40 days, and why do we need the wilderness?  Testing or tempting, what is the difference?  Why did Jesus fast for such a long period?  What place does a time of isolation and fasting have in my Christian walk?  What did Jesus do out there for 40 days?  Who is this ‘devil’ that is tempting Jesus?

For those of you who have elected to follow Jesus with your feet, there is no way to know how much walking Jesus did during these 40 days.  Depending on which part of the wilderness Jesus went to, he either had an 8-mile hike to the west from the river to the ‘traditional’ area, or 12 miles if he went to the wilderness east of the Jordan (both paths up in elevation 1000-2000 feet).  To better understand Jesus’ experience in these times, try doing your usual exercise routine in isolation.  If the local gym is your usual place, do some trail hiking alone.  Pray for the spirit to lead you (or drive you).  Spend this time alone with God, being aware of any testing coming your way and preparing your heart (and legs) for some Jesus-style walking in the coming year.

The wilderness.

First of all, we need to recognize the significance of 40 days in the wilderness, paralleling Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness.  If you want to read about Israel’s time there, most of that story is in the Bible book titled “In the Wilderness.”  Okay, so in your English Bible, the name of the book is “Numbers,” but in the Hebrew Bible, it is “Ba Midbar” or “In the Wilderness.”   (By the way, “Numbers” sounds like a book my accountant would be interested in, but certainly not me.  “In the Wilderness” sounds like a title I would pull off the shelf.)

Israel was in the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula for 40 years.  If you look at a satellite map of Egypt and the Sinai peninsula, you will be impressed by the tiny line of green vegetation in a narrow strip alongside the Nile, and then everything else is brown.  No vegetation.  No life.  Back in 2016 I hiked up a mountain near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and saw this for myself.  There is green alongside the Nile and then one step over, it is desert.  From the most lush land with the most fertile soil in the world to a wasteland in one step.  When you lived in Egypt in ancient times, the desert, the wilderness, was where you went to die.  Nothing was there except death.  When Pharaoh kicks the young man Moses out of Egypt for killing an Egyptian, it is a death sentence. No one was expected to survive the wilderness.

The Israelites leaving with Moses understood this. Only the severity of their enslavement and their faith in the provision of God would embolden them enough to step out of Egypt to a land of death.  Remember that God didn’t lead Israel on the more direct route to Canaan.  They could have traveled Northeast along the Mediterranean Sea to the promised land and arrived there easily in a few weeks along a well-traveled route.  But they needed the time in the wilderness. They had lived for generations as slaves, working under great difficulty, but depending on their Egyptian masters to care for their needs of food and shelter.  No one ever thirsted in Egypt.  They didn’t even depend on rain, for the Nile was always there. This country knew no drought until God turned the Nile to blood as a plague. They had much to learn about God’s laws, worship, and how to depend on him.  God’s deliverance got them out of Egypt, they needed the wilderness to get Egypt out of them.

They entered after the miracle of God parting the Sea of Reeds.  They saw Egypt’s army drown there, and then they headed east into the wilderness.  Then, they understand that the wilderness will be a time of testing for them.  They hunger, they thirst, they whine and complain.  “Why did you bring us out here to die?  We had plenty of food to eat and an abundance of water in Egypt.”  God intervened for them repeatedly, giving them water from the rocks, raining food from the sky, sending quail, leading them to oases.  They met God at Sinai and saw his presence in fire and cloud.  He trained them in the law and worship.  He healed their diseases and kept their shoes and clothing from wearing out.  Still, it wasn’t enough.

Deut. 8:2-3  Remember the long way that the LORD your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not. He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees.

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in Bewilderments: Reflections of the Book of Numbers, says, “The book of Numbers is a narrative of great sadness, in which the midbar, the wilderness, swallows up all the aspirations of a generation—people who experienced the Exodus, the Revelation at Sinai, and the creation of a sanctuary for God.”  Of the hundreds of thousands (or millions) of adults who witnessed the ten plagues, crossed the parted waters of the sea, and witnessed Sinai, only two survived to enter the promised land.  Every other adult died in the desert, a victim of faithlessness, having chosen at Kadesh Oasis to follow the majority report and refuse the promise of God to enter the land there.

God had them go through the wilderness to learn to be separate from Egypt.  He wanted them to see the uncertainty of basic necessities (food, water, shelter, etc.) and learn dependence on him. Sometimes, God has that same lesson for us.  We have to do without to learn to trust him as our provider.  We need times of solitude to learn loneliness to know God as our friend.  We need to know fear to understand that we can cast our cares on him.  We need to be weak to learn of his strength.  Paul said it this way:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.   2 Cor. 10:9-10

This is one of the reasons Jesus said it is hard for a wealthy person to enter the Kingdom of God.  With enough resources, we can continue to fool ourselves with the illusion of self-sufficiency.  Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon, and for a while, he thought, the king of the world.  He said, “There is great Babylon, which I have built by my vast power to be a royal residence for the glory of my majesty!”  Read Daniel 4 to see how God humbled him in a significant way.  Peter did not recognize his weakness and told Jesus there was no way he would ever deny him.  The Bible is full of these stories.  The first story in the Bible after Creation is about the lie from the serpent that Adam and Eve believed that they could be like God and would no longer need God to tell them what was good and what was bad.  People still buy into the lie of self-sufficiency every day.  We still need the wilderness.

Israel passes through the waters of the sea into the wilderness to be tested. Jesus passes through the waters of the Jordan and is sent into the wilderness to pass the test that Israel failed.  He is showing us how to be the people God designed us to be by becoming totally dependent on him.  We need the wilderness.  Find some time in these 40 days to be alone with God there.  Learn of your weakness so that you may know Him as your strength.  The wilderness may show up in an odd place.  (Read my blog from the past that I reposted yesterday, “The Day of My Fear,” about a wilderness moment I had ten years ago that day.)