Temptation

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

TEMPTATION

Mark 1:12-13

12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, 13 and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

NIV

Mark doesn't mess around with any of the details here about those forty days, of course nobody was really there except Jesus and Satan and all the wild animals plus at the end of it all a few angels. So the accounts of the conversations and types of temptations the other guys reported had to have been told to them by Jesus at some point in time. Yet Mark leaves it out, but he does tell us enough for us to know that when temptations come our way, there is going to be us and Satan alone by ourselves in what we could call a wilderness or desert situation. Now although the Spirit sent Jesus into the desert for whatever reason, of which we really do not know, even though one of the other Gospels states the Spirit led him into the desert to be tempted by Satan, he took advantage of the fact Jesus was isolated from all others. We also know from the letter by James that God cannot be tempted by evil, and Jesus being God, but also being man had some part of him the could be tempted yet he did not yield. That is something we cannot say about ourselves. Although some believers think they can live a life free of sin, there is not one of us who could claim we have never yielded to some temptation Satan has brought our way. After all that is why Jesus did not yield so that he would be the perfect Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice that would take away our sins. But we can rest assured that temptations will come our way. Satan will try his best to either isolate us physically, or he will try to spiritually so that we are in a weakened state and more apt to yield. This would be on good reason for us to be among other believers, both physically and spiritually all of us standing our ground together with our shields of faith extinguishing the flaming arrows, the temptations, of the evil one. If we try to hide our lives from each other, refusing to admit our areas of temptation to each other, then we are in fact isolated and more susceptible to even greater temptations. Satan will also try to attack the ones who are the weakest, alone and hungry. We may not be like Jesus in the sense we hunger for food, but we might well hunger for things, for fame, for recognition, for appreciation or even for some magical mystical experience. Whatever our hunger Satan will come and make his offer. So we must feast on the Word of God, we must fast from the things and the attitudes of this world as much as we can so that we are not hungry. We must not forsake the assembling of ourselves so we are not alone and hungry. Let us look for our ministering angels.