The following episode of the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast will open with a baseball story. If you don't speak baseball, don't worry, it'll all make sense in the end. I saw something in a baseball game that I've never ever seen before last summer, and I've played a lot of baseball and I've watched a lot of baseball, so it's an unusual thing for me to say. It was the Dodgers and the Cubs playing, and it was the ninth inning. There were two out, and the Dodgers have this excellent closer named Kenley Jansen. And he's in there with two down and a runner on second base. No big deal because they're up two runs. So that guy in second, he doesn't matter really at all. But Jansen starts thinking that that runner on second is stealing the signals that the catcher is giving the pitcher and somehow relaying that to the batter. That's not paranoid. That kind of thing happens in baseball. And so Jansen starts doing the math in his head. He's like, you know what? I'm going to do something that seems really counterintuitive. And he turns to his defenders and mouths the words, I'm going to intentionally bulk. Now, a bulk in baseball is bad for the defensive team. It's when a pitcher makes a movement that tries to deceive the runner, like goes halfway through a pitching motion. The runner's awarded a free base for that when it happens. So you don't want to do it. But Jansen does it really ugly and super on purpose and obviously, and the umpire's like, okay, I guess you advance to third base. And so the runner does, and then Jansen goes on to focus on the batter at the plate, finishes him off, they win the game. Now, when it was going down, it looks like the opposite of a good strategy. It looks like you're trying to hurt yourself, but in hindsight, hey, there's method to the madness here. And you then understand what the strategy was all about. Likewise, and there's always a likewise. In Matthew chapter 4, we're getting into the account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness at the hands of the devil, or at least we usually say at the hands of the devil. But who actually put Jesus there? Well, as I mentioned the other day, it's God himself. It's the Spirit who leads Jesus out into the desert. Matthew 4, verse 1. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. What gives? We just got done a couple verses earlier. No, one verse earlier, having God the Father and God the Spirit and God the Son all together, and God's like, This is my son. And I'm super well pleased with him. That seems like a ringing endorsement of unity and togetherness. And then one verse later, one member of the Godhead takes another member of the Godhead out into the desert, to like the roughest, most miserable place ever, where he's alone and vulnerable to the best manipulator and liar in the history of lies and manipulation, and who, of all the beings in the history of the cosmos, is most vested in thwarting God's plan that Jesus is carrying out by being here on earth and in the flesh. It just seems like an intentional bulk, like a really, really counterintuitive bad plan. We're in sentence one of Matthew chapter four, and we're going to answer the most obvious question answer, like I can ultimately solve these things. I am going to take a swipe at offering some useful thoughts as to what might be going on here and as to why the Spirit would lead Jesus out into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Reason number one, it's another one of those narrative completions from the Old Testament. But da da da dot dot Jesus, all throughout the Old Testament, we have things that range from overt predictions about very particular details that will go along with the work of the Messiah all the way over to narrative arcs that are just left in an unsatisfactory way, like the end of a great big long, decade-long drama on HBO that just ends on a sour note or an incomplete note. And you're like, wait, what? Finish the thing. You finish the thing. Well, Jesus finishes all the things. And one of the big components that we already see being established by Matthew is that Jesus kind of looks like a new Moses. Jesus looks like he finds himself in a lot of the same places as the chosen people of God, the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews in the Old Testament. And we see that overtly referenced in Matthew chapter 2 and verse 15, when we're talking about the whole Herod, kill the babies, flee to Egypt with baby Jesus thing, and says, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son. So that completion motif is underway here. And that gets the reader, the original audience, they would have been wildly conversive with the ideas of Egypt and the wilderness and what that means. And so their brains are already thinking that way. And now we see that Jesus is out in the wilds, as we discussed yesterday. That comes with connotations, but he's not just out there for like a day or two, or like, oh, he was out there for 71 days. He's out there for 40 days. Verse 2 After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. Oh, yeah, of course he was hungry. He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Think about that. That's exactly the same number of years that the Hebrews wandered around in the desert. Everything had been set up for them to go and be what they were supposed to be, but they go through this time of testing and difficulty in the desert. They get hungry out there. Oh, potential parallel, because Jesus is getting hungry. They get thirsty out there. They depend on themselves instead of depending on God to go and accomplish the things that they're supposed to accomplish and be who they're supposed to be. All of that stuff would not have been lost on the original audience. And I think that one of the reasons the Spirit sets this up the way he does is to offer another point of completion, of fulfillment of all righteousness, to quote Jesus from a couple verses earlier, another bop bop to quote me. The theme here is that we've seen people go through a test like this, 40 years, 40 days. We've seen them fail the test, even though they theoretically had everything they need to pass it. And now the question as we get to this is will Jesus fail it too? Will he labor through it and barely get through this thing? Much like Job labored through and barely got through his tempting and testing at the hands of the devil? Or will he just crush it with flying colors? Though that remains to be seen as we read ahead. Reason number one, the spirit leads him out into the desert is narrative fulfillment. Reason number two is to prove the uniqueness of Jesus' role coming off of that grand public affirmation in the very previous passage, previous verse, Matthew chapter three, at the baptism, all three members of the Trinity there. This is my son, with him I am well pleased. Jesus is clearly going to play the pivotal, the unique role in the history of redemption. But we have to see that he truly is unique in his build to accomplish this. Much like Job was in that horribly vulnerable state after going through all of these difficult things. But he also is fully God, fully man, fully God. What does that look like when you subject it to hunger and testing? A physical test of hunger, a spiritual test of satanic temptation? Well, I guess we're fixing to find out. And people needed to find out the answer to that question in order to know who Jesus was and to know what to expect of him moving forward. A third reason that I think the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted is to see if Jesus can pass a test that you and I can't. Can he endure this thing and go where literally no person has gone before? There have been so many opportunities already in the Bible, and frankly, there have been so many opportunities since for humanity to solve its own problems, for humanity to become fully vested and engaged with and embracing of the values of God and the kingdom of God. But we can't do it because we have this other nature that's built into us, and it's not checked by the nature of deity. Well, can Jesus pull that off? And if so, it means that he has gone somewhere where no one has gone before, meaning that he would be the first fruits, the example, the trailblazer for this thing that has to be trailblazed by somebody in order for redemption to happen. A fourth reason that the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted, in my opinion, is that Jesus is not just going to not do naughty things. He's not just going to not give in to temptation. He is going to thrive and push back on those temptations by exhibiting the values of the kingdom that he's just starting to articulate at this point in the narrative. Now remember, we haven't really heard much of anything from Jesus yet, but in the next chapter, chapter five, we are going to get a massive, massive speech from Jesus, his first big public pronouncement of who he is and what he's about and what the kingdom is and what the values of the kingdom are. And what we see is a preview of those kingdom values and what it looks like to model those kingdom values. The reason the temptations of the devil don't work on Jesus is because the payoff of all of those temptations is world value stuff. It's stuff that moth and rust destroy, that thieves break in and steal, it's perishable. And Jesus trades in a different currency. He trades in a currency that's internal and imperishable, where moth and rust don't destroy and where thieves can't break in and steal. And as a result, what he loves and what he values and what he's built for is at the level of his essence and priorities, uh, disarming toward temptations that are exclusively of world value. Fifth and final reason brings us back to a passage of the Bible that I have been pointing us at here for the last couple of days, and that is Hebrews 4. You will recall that this week of the 10-minute Bible hour podcast is sponsored by Hebrews 4.12, a verse that it would be a great idea to memorize and internalize. Remember, it goes like this for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. If you'll recall, the reason I'm asking you to internalize this and really try to wrap your brain around that one, is that this is what Jesus is going to depend on to fend off the temptations, and that'll come into focus as we read along. But flowing out of verse 12, there's this progression of thought that leads us to verse 15, and this is the smoking gun explanation for the fifth reason that I think Jesus is led out by the Spirit to be tempted. It says this for we do not have a high priest, high priest being Jesus here, who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin. Wow. He's not some Dr. Manhattan completely aloof, indifferent to these peon people kind of superhero deity thing. He is God in the flesh, all God, all man. He's been through everything we've been through. He's faced down all the stuff that we've had to face down, but unlike us, he passed every single time with flying colors. Wow. The implications of that are huge. One, narrative fulfillment, two, prove the uniqueness of Jesus. Three, pass a test that humans couldn't pass. Four, demonstrate kingdom values. Five, be able to sympathize with us and understand and be a high priest who we can get because he's been through what we've been through, but didn't fail in doing so. I am so excited to keep unwrapping this present with you. I love that we do this together. Thank you. Let's get after more of it tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour. We'll catch you soon.