Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
Matthew 4:1
“I can resist everything except temptation.” So said one of Oscar Wilde’s characters. I’ve been trying to think what my temptations are. I suspect most of my friends would say that I am tempted by gadgets; I waste far too much money buying ridiculous items that I think will make my life easier. Invariably they don’t and I end up sticking them in the back of a drawer or flogging them on eBay. I really should know better by now. There are a lot better ways of handling my money!
In this respect, as with so many others, I should learn something from Jesus. Right at the very beginning of his ministry, as we have seen, he went out to the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, where he was tempted by Satan. Satan tried to get him to turn stones into loaves of bread, to jump off a mountain so that the angels would save him, and with all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus manages to resist all of these, however. He finally commands Satan to be gone, thereby demonstrating that he has far more power than the devil.
In our current Mark Marathon article, we see the crowds reacting with shock when Jesus demonstrates that he has power over demons when he expels them from a possessed man. It stands to reason that this should not prove a challenge to Jesus, however. He has, after all, demonstrated that he has power over the chief demon, the devil, Satan himself. The demons who go by the name of Legion are small fry in comparison.
Throughout the gospels, Jesus demonstrates that he has significant power over all kinds of things. He has this power precisely because he is the Son of God, the Word made flesh. If Jesus is the son of God, is there anything that he cannot do?
