Part III of In the Wilderness: You Shall Not Put God to the Test

2025-04-14

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Jesus was Israel reduced to one. In the desert, many people of Israel fell in the trials described in the Exodus and until they entered the Promised land. The trials of the fleshwere diﬃcult to overcome. Jesus’ time in the wilderness for forty days was a reminder of their trials. There, he faced the temptations of the evil one. He experienced the troublesof the flesh, but Jesus was both God and man. It was in His victory that God proclaimed that this was His Son in whom He was well ple...

Jesus was Israel reduced to one. In the desert, many people of Israel fell in the trials described in the Exodus and until they entered the Promised land. The trials of the flesh
were diﬃcult to overcome. Jesus’ time in the wilderness for forty days was a reminder of their trials. There, he faced the temptations of the evil one. He experienced the troublesof the flesh, but Jesus was both God and man. It was in His victory that God proclaimed that this was His Son in whom He was well pleased.

In part III, the devil uses a selective quotation of a Psalm as his proof that God would bear Jesus up if he would throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple. If he could get the Son of God to do it, it would be a two-fer. His plan was to get God's Son to sin by tempting the Father, and to show that he was really a hypocrite and really wasn't the perfect Son of God. None of this of phased God's Son. Where Israel failed, God's Son would not falter.

The hymn: Fight the Good Fight. (Public domain).

The painting: Christ in the Desert by Ivan Kramskoy, 1872. (public domain).

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