Let's turn to Mark, but you may want to keep a bookmark in Matthew chapter 4. Our verse is in Mark chapter 1. Actually, two verses. So we're going to be reading. We'll go back and read from verse 9. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And a voice came out of the heavens, You are my beloved Son. In You I am well pleased. Immediately the Spirit impelled him to go out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to him. Well, clearly Mark gives a very, very brief account of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. Forty days during which he was tempted. And we're going to see this morning that Matthew and Luke give us more detailed accounts. But Mark has a particular purpose here with his gospel. And so while we will look at some of the details that Mark omits, we also want to look at the point that Mark is showing us here throughout his gospel. Well Lord, I thank You that You've given us Your Word. That You've opened our minds and hearts to be receptive to it. That You've given us an inner assurance by Your Spirit of the truth of all that You have set down in writing for us. Lord, as always, we desire that You would be our teacher. That You would teach us this morning by the power of Your Spirit. that we would be transformed. That we would be more useful servants in your eyes. Well, I want to begin this morning in Genesis chapter 2. After God had created the world, He formed man from the dust of the earth. And he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And Moses tells us that the man became a living being. Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. And we know that Adam did not come into the world in the same way the rest of us did. He was not the product of a union of a man and a woman. God made him. Made him from the dirt of the earth that he had created. And there was something else that distinguished Adam from the rest of us. Adam came into the world sinless. He came into the world in a state of innocence. He was capable of sinning, but he was also, unlike us, capable of not sinning. Neither did Adam's wife come into this world in the same manner as the rest of us. Eve was formed by God from the man. So they both came into the world innocent, sinless, capable of not sinning. Now when Adam ate from the forbidden tree, he incurred the guilt of violating the law God had given him. You may eat from any tree of the garden, but not from this one tree. If you do, you shall surely die. And so he was guilty before God, and he was stained with sin. And all of us who were born of the seed of Adam have inherited that stain of sin. The Bible teaches us that in Adam all of us were made sinners. All were made sinners. And as a consequence, in Adam all would die a physical death. and all died spiritually. We come into the world spiritually dead, separated from God. Romans 5, 12, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. All who are of the seed of Adam. come into the world stained with sin. Guilty before God. Spiritually dead. Separated from God. Without the capacity to please God. There is none righteous. There is none who does good. David said it. Paul repeated it. And we come into this world with only this hope. The declaration of God to the serpent after the fall of Adam. Genesis 3.15. I'll put enmity between you and the woman, in between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. This was the promise of a Savior, a Redeemer, a deliverer from sin. Now the entire focus of the gospel, according to Mark, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And the Son did not come into the world in the same manner as did all of us who are descendants of Adam. Jesus was not of the seed of Adam. Luke recorded the manner of Jesus' conception. Angel speaking to Mary in Luke 135. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And one of the first things that we learn in Mark's gospel is that the Son of God did indeed become a man. Now that was a big deal in the first century when they were uncertain of these things. When the gospel was being taken all over the world to places where people were not witnesses of the life of Jesus. So the first thing we learn here is that the Son of God became a man. And that He experienced every trial and difficulty that all men experience. Christ didn't just take a direct route from a crib or a feeding trough in Bethlehem to a cross in Calvary. He lived a life as a man subject to the law of God. Galatians 4.4, he was born of a woman, born under the law. Now was this really necessary that he be born under the law? to be subject to the same moral law of God that we have all failed to obey? Was this really necessary? Indeed it was. Our sin, though we may pass over it at times, There's even those who refer to different categories of sin, greater sins, lesser sins. Our sin, every one of them, is of such evil in the sight of God that its atonement could only be made by a sacrifice of infinite value. The sacrifice of a man, an innocent man, an unblemished offering, was what was necessary to atone for our sins and keep us out of hell. Had to be a man who was tempted, as we are, and yet did not sin against God. So like Adam, Jesus also came into this world innocent. Wasn't the seed of Adam. He came into this world sinless and without disdain of sin. He came into this world spiritually alive. The Spirit of God was upon Him. And so he is called in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 45, the second man, the last Adam. A second chance for humanity before God. That's why he took on flesh. And so he came into the world subject to both the law of God and to the temptations of men. So we saw last week, Mark began his gospel with a very brief account of the coming of John the Baptist and his ministry in the wilderness of Judea. Mark omitted many of the details and events of John's ministry that we find in Matthew and Luke and John. His focus in terms of John's ministry, is entirely on John's role as the one who introduced the Messiah to the world. John spoke of Jesus, Mark 1, 7, as one who is mightier than I. He said, I'm not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So, for Mark, the primary importance of John and his ministry was his message. This is the Messiah. Repent and believe in Him, the Son of God who's come into the world. Apostle John wrote of the Baptist, John 1, 6, There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. This was John the Baptist's mission. He was sent by God to announce the arrival of Messiah. And apart from Mark's mention here in chapter 1, verse 14, that John was taken into custody, taken to prison, he doesn't mention John again except in connection with Herod's murder of John and then Herod's delusion that John had risen from the dead. And you notice, even with regard to John's baptism of Jesus, Mark's focus is on the heaven's opening, the coming of the Holy Spirit as a dove, and the testimony of the Father from heaven as Jesus came up out of the water. You are my Son, the Beloved. In you I'm well pleased. Now, baptism Remember, John told the people, come and repent and confess your sins and be baptized. Jesus had no sin of which to confess or of which to repent, but he was baptized as a means of identifying himself with people like us, with wretches like us, with sinners. He was baptized as a means of identifying himself with the sinners he came to save. And his baptism, marked the beginning of his public ministry. All four Gospels we see this. His saving mission began with him coming to John to be baptized. And by his voluntary submission to baptism, Jesus not only identified himself with the sinners he came to save, but he signified his willingness to go forward with the task that the Father had assigned him. to suffer and to die for His people. Now what's remarkable about Mark's presentation of the gospel here, in just 11 verses, he's already brought all three persons of the Godhead into view. Now in verses 12 and 13, having affirmed the deity of Jesus This is my Son, the Beloved from heaven. That He's the Son of God, Mark now shows us His humanity. He tells us in verse 12 that after His baptism, after the voice from heaven, that the Spirit immediately impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. There's no time lag between these two events. Luke tells us in his account that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus, in His human nature, was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted. He would be tempted in His human nature. James tells us 1.13, God cannot be tempted. But in His human nature, Jesus would now face temptation. Because He's there as our representative. He's there as the second Adam, the last Adam. Spirit did not compel Him. Notice the wording. Luke tells us He was led into the wilderness. Mark uses the word impelled, but not compelled. Though Jesus was led there by the second person of the Trinity, He went willingly. He went voluntarily to face temptation as a man. And it was the Father's will that the Son's ministry would begin in this way, with His battle against Satan. This was all according to the eternal plan and purpose of God. God wasn't winging it as He went. Father subjected His Son now to the attack of Satan, just as He's about to undergo and undertake the redemption of His people. And Satan, of course, was pleased to oblige. Now, why would Satan want to seek to cause Jesus to sin? Because if he could do so, he could prevent all of our being saved. He could keep Jesus, if he would sin, from being an acceptable, unblemished offering for our sins. And we can't save ourselves. So he leads Jesus, the Spirit does, into the wilderness. Now this wilderness surrounding the Jordan Valley was known, at least in those days, as a haunt of hyenas and jackals and panthers, even lions. It was a very dangerous place. We're going to see. Mark tells us there were wild beasts there. His account is so brief as to barely constitute a headline here of Jesus' time in the wilderness. Mark tells us he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He uses the name satanas, the adversary it means. Tempted by the adversary. And he was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to him. So he gets from the beginning to the end in one sentence. This is Mark's entire account of Satan's temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Now the verb is rendered tempted here. It can have the meaning of being tested. As Abraham was tested, whether he would offer his son Isaac back to God. And in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament in Genesis 22, verses 1 through 19, this is the word that's used. Same word that's used for tempted here. Hebrews 11, 17 uses this word to speak of Abraham being tested by God. But the words here, the words being tempted by Satan, make it clear that the sense here is that the evil one sought to entice Jesus to sin and to destroy His mission. So as I said, Matthew and Luke both contain much lengthier accounts of Satan's temptation of Jesus. And you might want to turn to Matthew. We're going to kind of look at it. Not in great detail, but we're going to walk through it. Mark referred to Satan by that name, Satanas. Matthew and Luke refer to Satan as Diabolu, the devil. And let's be clear, folks, all the New Testament writers affirm the existence of a personal devil. And so did Jesus many times. Don't let the world lie to you about that. So Matthew 4, 1. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to him... And I know the word you probably have in your translations is if, but the actual meaning is, since you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. Now remember, a voice from heaven had just declared that Jesus is the Son of God. You are my Son, the Beloved. Satan says, since you're God's son, go ahead and use your divine power and tell these stones to become bread. And it shouldn't surprise us that after not eating for 40 days, the proposal to turn stones into bread was a real temptation to the human Jesus, to draw on his divine power. Verse 4, though he was hungry. And seeing that this was a test by Satan of Jesus' trust in His Father. And recalling the testing of Israel in the wilderness as recorded in Deuteronomy 8.3. Here's what Jesus said to him. He said, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Let me ask you a question. Could you live? Is it possible? Is there a way that you might be able to live without eating? That's an affirmative. Because we live, in the final analysis, because God wills that we live. Satan tries to get Jesus to think he has to have this rock turned into bread. He said to Satan, you're under a false assumption. You think it's food alone that keeps a man alive. But that's not so. It's the power and the Word of God that sustains life in every man. How many have we seen die while eating? Bread is just a means that God uses to sustain life. Well then the devil took him into the holy city. Luke tells us it's Jerusalem. And he had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And he said to him, Since you're the son of God, throw yourself down, because the Bible says he'll command his angels concerning you. And on their hands they'll bear you up, so you will not strike your foot against a stone. Satan knew what the Scripture said. Jesus said to him, On the other hand, it's written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. These are great lessons for us. Satan here purposely misused the words of Scripture in the way of all false teachers. He sought to goad Jesus into testing His Father. Jump off there and see if He'll save you. For what purpose? For what purpose? So Jesus rebuked him again with Scripture. And again, back to Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 16. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Matthew 4, 8. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Luke says, in a moment of time, And he said to him, All these things I will give you, if you fall down and worship me. And Luke adds here, For it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you worship before me, it shall be yours. This is the kind of proposal that Satan makes to man all the time. I'll provide you worldly things in exchange for your souls." This was the old story of the guitar player in the early to mid-20th century, Robert Johnson. He said he sold his soul to the devil. Bob Dylan made the same claim that the devil gave him his fame and wealth and notoriety. Satan wants your souls. He wants your souls with him in hell. So was this a vision of all the kingdoms of the world? Well, that appears to be the case. And we can look at two passages in Scripture that support this view. Very similar to the one we have here. First is Ezekiel chapter 40, verse 2, and it's just one verse. In the visions of God, He brought me into the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain. And on it, to the south, there was a structure like a city. So that's a vision. Revelation 21.10, John writes, And He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem. coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God. Well, clearly this was a vision. In both passages, though, you notice the one is set on or carried to a high mountain. And Ezekiel expressly states this happened in the visions of God. Revelation 1, 10, and 11, John tells us the visions he saw were shown him while he was in the Spirit. And in 2110 of Revelation, it was in the Spirit. He was carried away to a great and high mountain. So now in Matthew, the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. In a moment of time, Luke says. So this leads us to believe this was very likely a vision that he showed Jesus. But that Satan showed Jesus a vision of all the kingdoms of the world doesn't mean that this temptation of Jesus wasn't real. I mean, remember, that's the focus here. Jesus was being tempted. And if the vision is real, the experience of seeing a vision and being offered all it contains is just as real. It's no different, really, than having a picture of some house and saying, here, you could have this. A picture of a car and saying, here, you could have this. So Jesus' rebuke to this temptation of Satan, of this vision, if that's what it was, and I believe it was, was again direct and again based on the words of Scripture. Three times he drew on Scripture as the authority. Deuteronomy 6.13, Jesus said to him, Go, Satan, for it is written, and then the Scripture, You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. And notice, at Jesus' command, Satan departed, having failed to lure the second Adam into sin. When the devil had finished his temptation, he left him until an opportune time, Luke tells us. Temptations of Jesus weren't over. And then Mark even tells us angels came and ministered to him. We learn many things about Jesus here. You want to know Jesus? So many things we learn right here in these first 13 verses. One, He is a man. He became hungry. He was subject to temptation. And He's God. So Satan, who Jesus said is the ruler of this world, is subject to His commands. Subject to His power and His authority. When Jesus said, Go Satan, Satan left. Satan can only do what Jesus allows him to do. We saw this very thing in the story of Job. And we see that the human Jesus resisted the temptations of Satan. We see that he's the Son of God. How do we see that here? Well, there he was. Temptations passed. He's wearied in his humanity by hunger and temptation. And what happened? The Father sent His angels to minister to him, His Son. And we learn here that Jesus, the Son of God, holds the Word of God as the highest authority in all things. When He was challenged, when He was tempted, what did He go to? He went to the Word of God. This is our authority. He went to it as His authority. And finally, we learn here, this would not be the last of Satan's temptations of Jesus. Luke says, he left him until an opportune time. Now, Mark is going to make a point here in this first chapter and then the first three chapters. You remember, the apostle John wrote this, 1 John 3, 8, that Jesus came to do what? to destroy the works of the devil." Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. And that very theme is very prominent again in Mark's gospel. What do we see here? The very beginning of Jesus' public life is His temptation in the wilderness and His victory over Satan. beginning in verse 21 of Mark 1. We're going to see the first miracle of Jesus recorded in Mark. In Mark 3, 27, we're going to see the first teaching of Jesus in Mark. And what do they all have in common? In all of them, Mark shows Jesus' power and authority over Satan and all the forces of evil. Christians lived in a time of persecution. This is what's so in the front of the revelation to John. There's persecution coming, but John records Jesus' words to him. I am victorious. And Mark wants his Roman Gentile readers to know whatever Nero does, Christ is victorious. He is greater than Satan. We also notice here in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, of the temptations of Jesus. Nowhere does any human being come and help Jesus. Nowhere does anyone come in support of Him. When He went to the cross, at least Simon was forced, conscripted into helping Him with the cross. Here, no human helped Him in His wilderness ordeal. But that's not the end of the story. Because at the same time, we also see in these first 13 verses that Jesus was never alone in His redemptive mission. Right up until the moment that He was raised up on the cross. Father and the Spirit were always with Him. Remember, the Godhead is not divided. Separate persons, one God, indivisible. And not only is the doctrine of the Trinity clearly at the forefront here in these first 13 verses of Mark, but so too is another major doctrine of Christianity. The doctrine of the dual nature of Christ is also prominently displayed. In just 13 verses, we've already seen that Jesus Christ is both God and man. Son of God. And a man hungry and subject to temptation. for all his brevity." Mark has told us so much already. And in his account of Satan's temptation of Jesus, Mark includes one item that's omitted in both Matthew and Luke. He says that in the wilderness, Jesus was with the wild beasts. Where did the wild beasts come from? Well the very word that's translated wilderness, erimos, means a solitary, desolate, uncultivated, unpopulated place. A desolate, barren, deserted area with wild animals. I want you to think back to creation. In creation, where did God place Adam? He placed him in a garden paradise. And He gave him dominion over all the beasts of the earth. When Adam sinned, he not only lost paradise, he lost that dominion and some of those beasts became wild. Wild beasts we see here are a further picture of the damage that sin caused and that Jesus came to reverse. Thorns, thistles, wilderness, hard labor, wild beasts, all the result of Adam's sin. In the New Jerusalem, Isaiah tells us, chapter 11, verses 6 and 7, the wolf will lie down with the lamb. The leopard will lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together. In the New Jerusalem, the lion will eat straw with the ox. We don't see it yet, but Jesus, by His offering of Himself, by His redemptive work, has reversed even that circumstance. Adam was tempted in paradise. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness of the fallen world, a place of abandonment and danger. Very opposite of paradise. Adam was tempted and fell, though he had every tree in this beautiful garden from which to eat except one. Jesus was tempted when he hadn't eaten for 40 days and was very hungry. But Jesus, the last Adam, won the victory over Satan and temptation for us. We're the beneficiaries of that victory. As the representative of all His people, He had to also face temptation. And He had to triumph over it, as the first Adam had failed to do. Adam dropped us into this misery. Jesus rescued us from it. And only in this way, by facing temptation and triumphing over it, would he be an unblemished offering. The kind of offering necessary to atone for the sins of his people. Why would Satan want to tempt Jesus? And what was he hoping to accomplish? Well, he was seeking clearly to destroy the son's confidence in his father's love. Check and see. Jump off the building and see if your Father will send some angels to rescue you. He wanted to destroy Jesus' confidence in His Father's will and power to sustain Him. He sought to entice Jesus to distrust His heavenly Father. To take matters into His own hands. People do this all the time. God's not coming through. I'll do it my way. Satan, have no doubt, he seeks to cause us to lose trust in our Heavenly Father as well. This is the essence of all temptation. Did God really say? If He can break our trust in our Heavenly Father, He can take men to hell with Him, and He's having great success. One question seems to arise in this passage. Was it possible for the Savior to succumb to temptation? There are those who say no, He couldn't have failed. They cite James 1.14, which says, Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust, which is true. And then when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin. Men sin when they are carried away and enticed by their own evil desires. And as Christ was not of the seed of Adam, but rather was conceived of the Holy Spirit, the seed of a woman, He didn't have evil desires. He didn't possess a sin nature. He was formed, though, able to sin like Adam. He was formed able to not sin. In order for Christ to be our representative head, to be the acceptable offering for our sins, and so to save us and to intercede for us, He had to accomplish what Adam had failed to accomplish. He had to live a life of righteous obedience to God. And that meant He had to be tempted and to withstand the temptation. It had to be a real temptation. Hebrews 4.15, We don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are. That answers the question. Yet without sin. Now it's true for both Adam and Jesus. The temptation to sin came from outside. It was external. Didn't come from within initially. What was different in Jesus was that the external temptation did not stir in him an inner evil desire to follow the voice of the tempter as it had with Adam. Mark's showing us the humanity of Jesus here. That was a question. There were many false teachers claiming Jesus was not really human. That he was an apparition. Mark is making sure we understand. Jesus became a man. He's showing us His identification with us, with sinners. Both in His baptism and in His being tempted in the wilderness. Hebrews again, chapter 2, verse 14. Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself also partook of the same. that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death. He took on flesh that he might be an acceptable offering, that he might die, and that he might overcome death, not only for himself, because if Christ is raised, all are raised. He's the firstfruits. Hebrews 2.18, For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. When God created Adam, did He know Adam would rebel against Him and sin against Him? Of course He did. And knowing Adam would sin against Him, the eternal purpose and plan of God was this. 2 Corinthians 5, 21, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." This was God's plan. Sins for which He would suffer and die were not His own sins. They were our sins. Our sins were imputed to Him who had not sinned. And as a result of His saving work and His offering of Himself as an acceptable sacrifice, that righteous obedience that He displayed in the wilderness that day is imputed to all who believe in Him. At the cross, God looked at Christ, saw our sin. When we stand before Him, wretches that we are, He will see the righteousness of Christ. I pray if anyone has not placed your faith and trust in Him, may God grant that today would be the day that you do. Well, let's take a moment, reflect on what the Word of the Lord has spoken to us this morning. Then let us each examine ourselves, and then we'll gather at His table. Lord, what a glorious gospel. What great news. What great love. What great sacrifice. What righteousness and holiness we see before us. Lord, thank you that you call us your children. Thank you that we can know you. In Christ's name,