SO Jesus begins his ministry and begins his work to save us. He came to overcome the devil and save us from his dominion power. Immediately he is thrown into the conflict, and we see him engaged in the spiritual battle behind the scenes. There is so much more in the temptations of Jesus for 40 days than is on the surface, and far more than we can hope to appreciate this side of eternity.

Let us notice that these temptations and the whole experience was by the hand of God. Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit, for this special experience of being assaulted by the devil with temptation. What do we see happening here?

Jesus came into this world to be our Saviour. He came to be our representative and substitute before God. He came as the second Adam, and to be the everlasting Father of his people. Adam was standing and acting on behalf of all his posterity, that is the whole of humanity. His actions effected us all. The action he took was done in our name, and we are now afflicted with the consequences. So the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Satan is the God of this world. There is no explanation for the way the world is and the way human beings have always behaved, and the devastation caused in the world by humanities actions, apart from this effect of Adam�s sin upon us all. He made a choice for us all. He chose to obey Satan rather than God, and so we are born fallen, corrupted, and under Satan�s dominion.

Christ came to stand for his people, all those who believe on him, and in the very same way. He came to act on our behalf. What he did and achieved, benefits and effects all his people. His victory is ours. So as we died in Adam, so we live in Christ. As death came to us through Adam, so life comes to us through Christ, if so be that we believe on him. So all the life and action of Jesus was to win this life for his people, and to belong to the kingdom of God.

So Jesus had to be tempted in all points like we are tempted, and to the severest of such experience. He had to know all the doubts and fears that we know. He had to face the alienation from God his Father as we are alienated, and to experience it in the severest form, and to be victorious over it. He was tempted and tried in all points as we are, and yet never sinned. So he knows the feeling of the same infirmity as ours. This is what we see here in this experience. He was led by the Holy Spirit into the experience, this battle, this loneliness and separation from God. he suffered it for us, and was afflicted by the devil for us, and he stood firm for us, and won the victory for us.

He was taken into a physical desert. This is plainly evident, and in this desert he suffered physical privations which lowered his spirit and brought upon him great bodily weakness, with the evident suffering and despair and fear that such an experience brings. We know that when we are sick or weak or suffering in body, we are open to failure and giving up and wrong actions. All this Jesus suffered for us, and won the victory.

However, I believe there is more in this desert experience than simply the bodily. I believe the desert here also indicates the experience of the spiritual desert he suffered. At this time he felt the presence of the Father, God, depart from him. He felt alone. His thoughts encompassed all the terrible suffering that he was to undergo to carry out the Father�s will to save sinners. He saw the cost of this great undertaking, and he saw it while feeling entirely alone, the sense of his Father�s presence being removed. It was a foretaste of the experience he had to bear on the cross. When God laid on Jesus all our iniquity, he judged sin upon Jesus, and Jesus felt and knew the separation from God which is the punishment of sin, and we get an inkling of the hell that he suffered when he cried �My God, my God, why have your forsaken me!�. I believe Jesus was having a foretaste of this here. He felt alone, separated from his Father, with all the burden of the work he had to undergo and perform brought vividly before his mind, together with a knowledge of its consequence that only he as the divine mediator could know. This was the desert.

I believe this to be the greater of the sufferings he experienced in this desert, but which the physical suffering enhanced. I believe it was the purpose of God to cause him to experience all this at the commencement of his ministry, so that what he had to do, and its cost, may be faced, and the victory won.

How can I say this? I say this as I notice the way Satan tempted him. He prefaced the first two temptations by the words �If you are the Son of God.� Jesus being alone and in the darkness of loneliness, and suffering in his human nature as the second Adam, and knowing on our behalf all the separation from God our sin brought, he was being tempted to doubt even his Sonship. The temptation was to prove his divinity by exercising divine power. To succumb to such temptation would be the greatest of sin, for it would be to doubt God. No wonder the last temptation was to give in to Satan.

The whole of this experienced, suffered over 40 days, and in tremendous weakness, was a test of utmost severity. He was made to enter fully into the experience of what it would mean to bear the sin of many, and work complete atonement. The great blessing of this history is that Jesus was victorious.