Tag: Temptation

I Am in the Same Place Where You Left Me

In their distress, men find a way to call on God, even if he does not believe in His existence. An Atheist found himself at the mercy of a bear, one day while walking in the forest; his first reaction was Oh my God! A minute earlier, his belief was, “I don’t believe in God.” How convenient it is for some people to use the name of God to release their stress, as if by magic God would come to them right at that moment. I am sure that happens sometimes to those who trust in Him. For He is ever so near to us. Nothing separates us from His love and care for us. But even for those of who love the Lord, we must understand that the Lord’s timing for all things is beyond our reasoning of space in time. All Knowing, our God knows the right time to answer our prayers.

When YAHSHUA was hanging on the cross, performing the work of redemption for the world, in His last hour on that cross, He left a cry to His Father that has been registered for us to grasp the meaning of: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Do you suppose He did not know why He had been rejected by the Father in those hours? Have you ever thought why He would cry that way? That, my friend, would be men’s cry in hell, where the presence of God is void. That happened when God made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all; that was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; to put Him to grief and to make Him sick; God made His life an offering for sin; in time to come He shall see His [spiritual] offspring (Isa. 53: 6b,10).

He travailed for our salvation in order to present us to His Father a blameless church, pure and sanctified by His Spirit.  So, when He cried to His Father the separation between them, it was so that we would not be. However, He did not promise a perfect life on this earth; He promised to be with us to the end of time. He said, In the world you will have tribulation; be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16:33b). You and I well know when it happened. He deprived the world of its power over us; He conquered it for evermore so that would not hurt us. At Lazarus death, YAHSHUA suffered for us, when He wept at the circumstance; not that He could not bring life to Lazarus, but for the hopelessness of man confronting death at their cry. He saw then what He had to go through to redeem us from the power of death.

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At the Point of My Need

(Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:13)

And YAHSHUA went without food for forty days and forty nights, and later He was hungry (vs 2). At the point of YAHSHUA’S need, Satan appeared to Him with his suggestion, knowingly exactly Who YAHSHUA was. “If You are God’s Son, command these stones to be made bread” (vs. 3). Trying his sarcastic and doubtful way, “If you are the son of God” to entice YAHSHUA to fall into his trap. YAHSHUA knew Who He was and so did he. This was a temptation within a temptation. He used the old scheme when he first tempted man with doubt. To Eve he said, “Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1)  He created the need for Eve and Adam to fall into the temptation of being like God.

YAHSHUA was and is the Bread of life that satisfied and continues to satisfy all who hungers after Him. In His humanity, He was hungry, but His Spirit could never have been weak in the sense that He was God. As He said bread alone does not maintain life, but every Word that derives from the mouth of God. Man’s needs are both in the physical as well as in the spiritual levels. Bread alone does not satisfy the need of the soul neither will it meet the spiritual need of men. Seek first the Kingdom of God, YAHSHUA commanded us, for the physical need to be met. It will be from the spiritual level that our physical needs will be met.

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Temptation at the Point of Our Need

YAHSHUA, at the starting of His ministry, fasted for a period of forty days and forty nights. He chose the Judean wilderness where He would be by Himself and away from it all. The Judean desert is located east of Jerusalem, and descends to the Dead Sea. It seems to be a place of contrast and beauty. YAHSHUA’S choice to spend alone with His heavenly Father was perfect in location and quietness. Forty days sounds like a long time for someone to go without food. But YAHSHUA’S purpose was always to do the will of His Father. Eating was not in His agenda, as when He met the Samaritan woman in the heat of the day and the disciples called His attention to eat. He answered them saying, I have food to eat of which you know nothing and have no idea… My food is to do the will of Him Who sent Me and to accomplish and completely finish His work (John 4:32,34).

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In the Wilderness of Temptation

No nation has ever experienced the physical wilderness as the nation of Israel. Theirs were the trials, the thirst, the hunger for meat, for the onions and other things Egypt offered. To them were given forty years wandering through the desert for the purpose of being formed as a nation under God Himself. Many died; a large number of them; they did not make it through the wilderness to their destination, because they fell to temptation, while their hearts became hardened as they were tested. The signs and wonders they witnessed when God provided for their needs did not serve as a guide to exercise faith in Him. So their journey became a wilderness of temptation in every aspect: physical, emotional and spiritual. That constituted an open door to fail in every time a need arrived. Without waiting for God to provide for their needs, as He promised He was going to, they murmured and complained, even when manna- food from heaven was given them.  They longed the world’s food instead. In Psalm 95 the Psalmist remembers those days with a warning: Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tried My patience and tested Me proved Me and saw His work. Forty years long was I grieved and was disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge or regard My ways. Therefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest (95: 8-11), and again in Hebrews 3: 7-11.

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Wilderness, a Place For Temptation

(Luke 4)

Then YAHSHUA, full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in [by] the [Holy] Spirit for during forty days in the wilderness, where He was tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they were completed, He was hungry (Like 4:1,2). The devil came to YAHSHUA at the point of His need – hunger. Forty days and nights without eating can starve the body and lead it to death, that is, for some people, depending on their health factors. Forty days is long enough time for the body to have used all the resources it had to be sustained. YAHSHUA, as a man, was subject to the weakness of a human body, but not to man’s sinful nature. He was led to the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted in preparation for the ministry He was going to fulfill. Like us, He was also subjected to temptations, and to the extent of sufferings that we experience. So after fasting forty days and forty nights, His obvious need of that moment was hunger. Hunger and thirst in the desert are something hard to overcome without having knowledge of how to survive in such environment which lacks everything that benefits the body. The Bible does not say if He went without water however, I assume so. Whatever the situation, He went hungry after forty days.

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