Christ spent forty days and nights wandering the same wilderness as the Israelites in silence and contemplation of God.
When God created human beings, He made a man and then He made a woman. The man was called Adam. And God gave Adam – the man – Eden, which is the perfect world. There was not pain or suffering in Eden because there was no sin. Human beings were expected to live in Eden for the term of their Earthly lives and then transition – painlessly – to Heaven afterwards. While human beings lived in Eden they were able to see God Himself. They were able to communicate with Him and live with Him and understand Him better than we can now, because their intellect and their spiritual understanding was not corrupted by sin and the catastrophic effects of sin.
So, Adam lived int his perfect world with all the advantages that we modern humans could not even imagine, and yet still – when his wife, Eve approached him asking him to join her in her sin of disobedience and pride against God, he fell to the temptation and fell quickly.
In other words, Adam chose the things created by God over God Himself, even despite living in a place where all those created things were already his for the taking…
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Genesis 3:6-7).
And what that means – their eyes were opened – is that the two could experience lust for the first time and therefore needed to devise ways to hide their modesty. In other words, the sin of disobedience, caused by the sin of pride, then led to the sin of lust, quickly followed by the sin of deceit (when they later lied to God after having hid from Him in the garden).
Sin is a slippery slope…
The Israelites spent forty years int eh desert wilderness wandering around while seeking the Promised Land. And they complained the entire time…
“As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna in front of the Testimony, that it might be kept. The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.” (Exodus 16:34-35).
Christ – is the new Adam. He spent forty days and nights wandering the same wilderness as the Israelites had done. But He spent that time – in a place which is the opposite of the Garden of Eden and far away from all created things – in silence and contemplation of God. And when He was tempted by the Evil One over this time – as Adam had been before Him – He chose not to succumb.
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” (Matthew 4:1-2).
And I have been reflecting on this today. Because Christ endured temptations far greater than any I would ever endure, and He endured hardship far worse than any I could ever face, and He was victorious. And it occurs to me today that I must pray for the Grace of God’s Victory to wash over me. For I could never achieve such a victory myself…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.