by Brent King
Tempting Jesus
Brent King
Copyright © 2014 by Brent King
All rights reserved.
Edited by Melissa Gray, www.eprintedbooks.com/Melissa
Cover design by Ronnell Porter, https://ronnelldporter.wix.com/design
Manufactured in the United States for Bluewater Publications
“The human will of Christ would not have led him to the wilderness of temptation, to fast, and to be tempted by the devil. It would not have led him to endure humiliation, scorn, reproach, suffering, and death. His human nature shrank from all these things as decidedly as ours shrinks from them” (Ellen White, Signs of the Times, October 29, 1894).
INTRODUCTION
We struggle throughout our lives with a dragon that will not let us go. Our desires are focused on ourselves to the exclusion of others, especially to the exclusion of God. We do our will, not God’s.
Jesus came to break this curse and give us freedom from the slave of self. Even under extreme incentives of self-preservation, Jesus never relied on Himself, though constantly badgered by a human will that urged him to do so.
How did Jesus do this? Since He was “in all point tempted like as we are,” did he have to fight every specific temptation that we do? For instance, did He have an urge to molest a child, as some fallen men do? No. In the wilderness, he faced “every kind of temptation” in the extreme, but these temptations were hard for Jesus to overcome because His struggle—a struggle greater than any of ours—was to resist His inclination to depend upon the divinity within Himself. (Luke 4:3)
Make no mistake, when it came to sin, Jesus was different than we are. His fallen nature fought the inclinations of His divine self, while ours fights the inclination of our depraved selves. Though the things we struggle against are different, our common ground is the same fallen, faulty will. Christ’s will shrank from doing God’s will as decidedly as ours. This fallen nature haunted Jesus throughout his life on earth, culminating in the iconic battle in Gethsemane, where He finalized His decision with the thrice-spoken words, “Not my will, but yours.”
This puts Jesus decidedly on the same ground as us. Our greatest need is to renounce self-dependence and trust fully in God. This was His struggle on earth as surely as it is ours.
“Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion” (Philippians 2:5-8 The Message).
That God was willing to suffer the torment of our fallen nature, to experience a more difficult version of the same struggle that we face, is a reality hard for us to comprehend. In the following pages I have tried.
CHAPTER ONE
The Roman official seized Joseph's last cent.
“This isn't enough,” he said, “not nearly enough.”
“Sir,” Joseph said, “I don’t have any more. Give me more time, and I will pay you everything.”
The officer sneered.
“I think you do have more.” His eyes shifted from Joseph to a weather warrior next to him. “Marcus! Seize this man’s son. He will work for Rome until his debt is paid.”
Joseph fell to his knees. “No! Not my son! Take me instead!”
The officer smirked at Joseph. “Your son will do. Rome needs you here. Now escort these soldiers to your home. Next!”
Joseph hesitated, but the soldiers gripped their swords, and he knew he had no choice but to obey the command. They followed him through the streets to his home.
Minutes later, soldiers stormed the door of Joseph’s house. It collapsed inward, startling Mary and Jesus to their feet.
“There he is!”
Joseph entered behind them, his face twisted and his hands tied.
“I have older sons who could serve Rome better.”
“This son will do,” the soldier said.
He seized Jesus and slammed his mother against the wall. She fell, weeping, to the floor. Jesus’ father blocked the door, but a massive fist spun him into the street. Jesus struggled in the soldier’s arms—reaching, reaching—for his father, as they dragged him farther and farther from home. At last, his father disappeared from view, and he was alone.
Sobs wracked his body as he woke to his dad’s touch.
“Are you okay, Jesus?” Joseph asked.
Jesus wrapped himself around his dad and held him tight.
“Yes,” he said at last. “It was just a bad dream.”
“Jerusalem!” Jesus cried.
His heart leapt within him as the holy city engulfed his vision at a bend in the road. He glanced back at his parents and beamed.
“Jerusalem,” he whispered to himself as they continued to walk south toward the city.
The evening sun lit its walls and towers before him, yet nothing but the temple at the height of Zion held his eye. It rose above the city like a glittering crown. Its walls gleamed brighter than anything in his memory. He fell back a few paces and reached over to take his dad’s hand.
“Why am I so happy?” he asked, catching Joseph’s eye.
His dad smiled.
“It is the city where our God dwells,” he said. “‘You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy—’”
“‘And at your right hand are pleasures forevermore,’” Jesus chimed in. “I love that Psalm. It reminds me of King David and Solomon and Nehemiah the Prophet, who rejoiced over Jerusalem. Now I will enter her gates and know their joy.”
Hands clasped, they trekked onward toward the City of the Living God. Nothing but the donkey’s hooves broke the silence with their clip-clop, clip-clop. When Jesus spoke again, his voice was distant.
“It’s almost like I’ve been here before….”
Jesus plunged beneath the cool water. Yet more than the physical and moral refreshment of the bath energized him this time. The towering height of the temple complex captivated his mind. He stepped out of the mikveh and stopped once again to gaze upward at the wall. At its summit, the golden roof of the Royal Porch reflected the morning sun back toward him in a cataclysm of glory.
“Come on, Jesus.”
A voice entered his consciousness. He brought his eyes back to the earth, and there stood his dad, holding out his hand.
“You won’t believe the stairway. It runs right through the holy mountain, to the summit.”
Soon Jesus and his parents entered the Triple Gate. The massive pillars, arched ceilings, and flickering torches enchanted Jesus as he ascended the grand staircase through the bowels of the sacred place with thousands of other pilgrims. Yet none of its grandeur prepared him for what met his eyes as they broke into the sunlight at the top.
He squinted.
A vast court stretched out in every direction. Rows of monumental pillars surrounded it like vigilant sentinels, forming porches on every side. He tried to make out the scope of its expanse, but thousands of worshipers crowded its square and blocked his view. Yet no crowd could keep his eyes from the temple. It stood to the north and reared its blinding façade into the heavens before him, captivating his mind and soul. The gold that adorned its face and summit shimmered in his eyes.
“‘I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord,”’” Jesus said. “‘Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem…Peace be within thy walls.’”
&
nbsp; His mother glanced over at him.
“I knew you’d love this place,” she said, “for ‘here, the righteous flourish like palm trees. They grow like cedars of Lebanon, planted in the house of the Lord.’”
Jesus and his dad joined her in the last sentence of the Psalm. Their voices trailed off into silence as they gazed at the splendor. Joseph broke into their reverie.
“Do you want to help me pick out the lamb?”
Jesus nodded and followed him toward the pillars of the Royal Porch that rose high behind them.
They examined a whole flock of lambs in the shadow of an immense pillar before deciding on the perfect one. As Jesus picked it up and gazed into its eyes, Isaiah the prophet spoke to him: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way….”
“Let’s go closer,” his dad said, running a hand through the fleece of the lamb. “We'll go into the inner court through the Beautiful Gate.”
As they crossed the Court of the Gentiles, they came to a low wall that read:
No foreigner is to go beyond this barrier and the plaza of the temple zone. Whoever is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his resulting death.
“Death,” Jesus said, pausing a moment to think. “Don’t our leaders know that Isaiah wrote: ‘Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, “The Lord will never let me be part of his people. For I will give them—within the walls of my house—a memorial and a name, an everlasting name that will never disappear!”’”
Joseph drew closer and lowered his voice.
“Be careful what you say, Son. Our leaders know what is best. We must be careful to respect them.”
Jesus’ big eyes met Joseph’s and he shook his head.
“It’s better to obey God than men.”
“Yes, but sometimes, discretion is in order.” Joseph wrapped an arm around Jesus. “We don’t want to be expelled from this holy place.”
As they approached the Beautiful Gate, it shouted out its name. It loomed above them to an impressive height, as if trying to reach the summit of the temple itself. Gold and silver trimmed the bright marble that shone like the temple that rose above it. Jesus gaped, his eyes wide, as they walked through it into the Court of Women. Pillared porches surrounded it, and the barbequed smell of the sacrifices lingered in the air, the scent strong.
They approached a trumpet-shaped moneybox in the court, one of many.
“Here, Jesus,” his dad said, bringing him back to earth. “Here’s our offering.”
Joseph pressed a few coins into his hand, and Jesus said a prayer as he let them clatter into the box. The sound mingled with hundreds of voices and the bleating of animals from beyond another gate that yet stood between them and the temple. Jesus stared at the height of the temple, soaring above the Nicanor Gate, as they waited in line for their turn to sacrifice their lamb. To stand so near it filled Jesus with awe. He craned his neck and stretched a million different ways to get a better view. They ascended the fifteen steps of the great circular staircase before the Nicanor Gate at the pace of a Mediterranean starfish. At last, they inched through the gate, and the magnificent temple loomed unobstructed in their vision.
Tears washed the cheeks of Jesus as he gazed up at the immediate splendor of the house of God. “‘Bless the Lord, O my soul!’” he whispered, “‘O Lord, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a cloak.’”
Yet his eyes soon fell from the grandeur to streams of blood, and to a train of carcasses ascending the ramp of a two-story altar to be burned. The priests slit throat after throat before him in a bloodbath of ritual. He tried to turn away, but couldn’t. At last, he and his parents presented their lamb to a priest. He gazed into its big eyes as the priest positioned the knife. It quivered and, with a flood of compassion, he longed to take it in his arms and keep it from this fate.
As he laid his hands on the animal, the words of Isaiah came again: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent so he did not open his mouth.” His thoughts and the knife’s mission converged. The lamb’s eyes faded before him as its blood splashed into a bowl held by a priest. Its quivering ceased, and Jesus reached up and gripped his own throat. He stepped back. Why did he identify with this lamb? He shook his head as the bowl of blood passed from priest to priest, splattering, at last, against the stones of the altar.
It didn’t look much like a lamb after Jesus and his dad finished slaughtering it. Jesus wiped the blood from of his hands and dropped to his knees in the Court of the Israelites. His eyes followed their lamb as a priest carried it up the ramp and placed it on the altar. Its smoke joined the smoldering remnants of a hundred other offerings that troubled Jesus’ mind like it marred the blue sky. He remembered the words of God to Moses: “Then the priest will burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a fire offering of a pleasing aroma to the Lord.”
Jesus’ mind raced as he struggled with a picture of God smiling over such a brutal offering. He glanced at his blood-splattered clothes. “The Lord is good,” he whispered. “His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures to all generations.” God’s goodness surrounded him. Yet, in contrast to his whispered reminder of God’s goodness, the thought persisted in its torment. What possible good did God see in this gruesome scene?
Yet he knew the answer, one that few men still understood. The fire offering pleased God because the lamb represented the coming Messiah, the One who would save repentant men from sin. Such a grisly act as crushing His Holy One and putting him to grief aroused God's pleasure because of his love for men. Yes, it was true, the Messiah was to pay the full wages of the sins of men: to be pierced through for men’s transgressions, crushed for their iniquities. The chastisement and scourges men deserved were to fall upon God’s Holy One, bringing them healing and salvation.
Jesus’ eyes remained fixed on the smoke ascending toward the height of the temple as he walked from the holy court with his family. While his parents visited with friends, he settled up against a pillar and continued to stare at the scene from a distance. A greater meaning must be hidden behind the obvious. A mystery lurked in the great ceremony that eluded his grasp.
Silence and introspection possessed Jesus as he participated in the Passover services day by day. Every meal, every song, the solemn ritual of every priest drove the meaning of the ceremony further home. At last, the day of the climactic Passover ritual came. Ninety priests, dressed in their finest, entered through the Court of Women into the Court of the Priests in three divisions. The choreography of the ceremony pictured the perfection of the lamb they carried. Jesus watched the grand display from the roof with his parents until the last priest disappeared through the Nicanor Gate and its mighty doors closed behind them.
Three blasts from the trumpets marked the moment when the knife fell upon the Paschal Lamb. As the smoke of the sacrifice ascended to the heavens, every thought and impression from his first Passover experience fell upon Jesus all at once.
His mind went back to God’s promise to Adam and Eve, of one who was to become their savior from sin, a deliverer symbolized by every lamb that they would slay. Every man who killed a lamb and confessed his belief in the coming sacrifice received pardon for his sins. Now here he stood, thousands of years later, participating in Adam's sacrifice.
When was the Deliverer to come? He remembered the stories of his birth: of angels and stars and wise men from the East. These and the prophecies of Bethlehem, Egypt, Simeon, and Anna seemed to point to him. Could he be the Great Deliverer?
He was dreaming. He was a young boy in a big world. Why should he even think such thoughts? Besides, this Deliverer’s quest tracked far from glamorous, far from any warrior’s dreams of fame. Again, his mind replayed the words of Isaiah: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we a
re healed.” No one would want the job.
Yet prophecy proclaimed a Deliverer to be born as a baby and grow up into a man. The stories and prophesies of his youth were compelling. Why couldn’t he be the Deliverer?
“Am I the one, God?” he whispered. “Am I the unblemished lamb who will someday be the sacrifice that is a pleasing aroma to you?”
The words of Zechariah answered him. “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.”
To believe himself to be that shepherd—an equal companion of God—was blasphemous if it wasn’t true. How could he know for sure? He gazed off toward the great temple and the smoke that surrounded it, the smoke of a great sacrifice—his sacrifice.
No! It wasn’t possible. He surely didn’t relish the thought.
It must point to someone else. Someone else must be the smitten lamb.
Yet a foreboding lingered within him. He couldn’t repress the conviction that grew stronger and stronger in his heart. It culminated in the voice of Solomon:
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When He established the heavens, I was there…when He marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.”
As he sat with his head against his mother, the light of midday darkened around him, and the din of pilgrims faded. He passed through the magnificent doors of the temple porch. A row of candlesticks flickered on his left, and bread lay stacked on golden tables to his right. They drifted by him as he moved through the sanctuary. The aroma from the Altar of Incense filled his nostrils. He paused at last before a blue, purple, and scarlet curtain made of fine linen. It hung regally before him, embroidered with bright cherubim.
