Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test (Matthew 4:1 MSG).

This week our third-grade granddaughter will be taken by her parents to her school where her teacher will administer the test that will determine her students’ readiness for fourth grade.

If Miriam passes the test, there will be two results. She will know she has learned what is needed to enter fourth grade confidently and eagerly, and her fourth-grade teacher will know Miriam is prepared to tackle the fourth-grade curriculum. 

Obviously testing can be helpful. Yet we are inevitably averse to it. Why?

It’s because of the voices, isn’t it? It’s the subtle and not-so-subtle thoughts in our heads that insinuate, belittle, confuse, frighten, and just plain disrupt our peace when we face testing. 

With this in mind, let’s follow Jesus as He is taken by the Spirit into the wild for His time of testing.

Remember that directly before this, Jesus had heard the Father say, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased” (Mt.3:17).

This God-spoken fact is what the evil voice that came at Jesus sought to discount and corrupt with twisted suggestions. Let Your circumstances determine whether You trust God, it proposed. Require God to prove His care by doing what You demand. Grab power for Yourself, don’t bother doing things God’s way.  

This was the adversary’s tactic to get Jesus to forget—or at least to question—everything He had learned.

The way Jesus responded revealed that He had internalized to the depths of His being the truth about both the Father’s goodness and His own identity as the Son with whom God is well-pleased. 

His response also revealed His prowess in dispensing with the voice of evil and His readiness to begin fulfilling His mission.

Where did Jesus get this truth with which He countered the evil voice? It was there in the Scriptures He had internalized—not just with His head, but with His heart and by experience—throughout His lifetime. Not only did He know Scripture well enough to quote it, He knew it well enough to detect any corruption of it. 

Jesus had been tried and had remained true.

From our earliest days we have been targets of the voices—that usually sound like our own and use “I” statements—enticing us to doubt the truth about God and His amazing ways. God, however, didn’t leave us vulnerable. HIs Scriptures are just as available for us to internalize today.

It takes becoming aware of the lies we “hear”—many related to the ones Jesus heard—and then doggedly countering them with Scripture to make it through to “tried and true.” On the way there, “Away from me, Satan!” is always useful. As is Churchill’s advice to “Nev’r, nev’r, nev’r give in.”