The Spirit would show to man the weakness of the devil.  The devil can do nothing with the man who is calmly set in his loyalty to God.  This new Leader of the race was led up to the dreaded devil that men might know for all time his weak spot.  The poison of those fangs is completely neutralized by simple, steady loyalty to God.  But the rattles do make a big scary noise.

It is safe to go where the Spirit of God leads, and not safe to go anywhere else.  The wilderness, any wilderness, becomes a place of victory if the Spirit of God be leading there.  Any temptation is a chance for a victory when the Spirit leads the way.  A man’s controlling motive determines the attractiveness or ugliness of any place.  To Jesus this wilderness barren was one of the mountain peaks.  Its forbidding chasms and ugly gullies and darting snakes ever afterwards speak to Him of sweet victory.  The first great victory was here.  He made the wilderness to blossom with the rose of His unswerving loyalty to His Father.  And its fragrance has been felt by all who have followed Him there.  To the tempter it was a wilderness indeed, barren of anything he wanted.  He quit it the first chance he could make.  He would remember the beasts and serpents and dreary waste.  For here he received his first death-thrust.

Every man whom God has used has been in the wilderness.  The two great leaders before Jesus, and the great leader after Him, had each a post-graduate course in the University of Arabia.  A degree in that school is required for those who would do valiant service for God.  Only so can the eyes and ears be trained away from the glare and blare of the crowd.  They needed it, we need it, for discipline.  He, the matchless Man, for that too, and that He might make it a place of sure victory for us.

Earth’s Ugliest, Deepest Scar.

Jesus is the only One of whom we are told that He was led up to be tempted.  He was the leader of the race for the regaining of the blurred image, the lost mastery and dominion.  He Himself bade us pray not to be so tempted.  He out-matched the tempter.  Any one of us, alone, is clearly out-matched by that tempter.  But we may always rest secure in the victory He achieved that day.  Only so are we safe.

It is noteworthy that the place of the temptation was chosen by the Spirit, and what place it is He chooses.  Mark keenly, the tempter did not choose it.  He was obliged to start in there, but he seized the first chance to get away to scenes more congenial to himself.

The wilderness is one of the most marked spots on the earth’s crust.  That remarkable stretch of land going by swift, steep descents almost from Jerusalem’s very door down to the Dead Sea.  It was once described as “the garden of God,” that is, as Eden, for beauty and fertility, like the fertile Egyptian bottoms.  For long centuries no ghastlier bit of land can be found, haggard, stripped