Jesus’ Baptism and Temptation

Matthew has just described how Jesus has come to John the Baptist in the wilderness and asked for public baptism in the river Jordan, along with all the other people queueing up.

But this is no ordinary person! As Jesus comes up from the water, the heavens split open, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descends upon Him and the voice comes from heaven, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17).

And then we are told: The Holy Spirit leads Jesus straight into the wilderness where He spends forty days and nights totally alone and eating nothing. Forty days and nights of starvation!  This is not just giving up chocolates for lent! This is life-threatening.

Medical observation is that starving people become weak in 30 to 40 forty days, and die in 43 to 70 days. So, what is going on?  I have never grasped before just what a huge challenge this experience of the wilderness is for Jesus. And Holy Spirit led Him there.

Jesus has come to Earth to reveal the Father and to live every single moment of His life in obedience to His Father. Will He do it? Will He always, and at every moment, listen to His Father, honour His Father, give all the glory to His Father, and never once take the glory, the success, the adulation for Himself?  Will He obey to the last detail, the last moment, in every single thing He does and says?

I believe that in this desert fasting God is testing His Son. There is going to be one more huge test even beyond this that Jesus must face at the time of His death and torture by flogging, mocking and crucifixion. Will He stand the test in that also? We see His personal battle in the Garden of Gethsemane. We are told that He was sweating what looked like blood as He prayed (Luke 22:44). This named condition is hematohidrosis, something normally encountered only in extreme levels of stress.