'Jesus in the wilderness is not primarily being a role model we need to emulate, but a redeemer who we can lean on.  It’s Jesus who did battle with evil, and has won. He has the right to redeem us, the strength to restore us, the experience to understand us. So let's turn, and re-turn to Jesus. Who has tasted pain, hunger, vulnerability. Who has shown He is the stronger one. Evil, the devil, temptation, have not won. So maybe we can lean on him, before we try to copy him. We can talk to him about our struggles, and not just try to get better.'  Read on to see Sera's sermon first preached at St Denys in Lent 2026. The reading in Matthew 4:1-11

Today’s Bible passage, speaks of a whole cacophony of choices Jesus made, some loud and obvious, some whispered and low key. And I’ve discovered as I’ve sat with this passage this week, and wrangled, that we have choices on how we look at it:

• To see Jesus as our role model – showing us what to in the face of tough times and testing and evil.
• Or to see Jesus as our redeemer – proving his worth and authority to be the saviour of all, and to be the one we turn in our times of wilderness and struggles and choices.

 And it’s as the second one that we get to the heart of what’s going on here, and see a way through the wilderness, and the whirlwind.

40 Days Of Choices:

We are focusing on Jesus at a turning point in life. The nobody carpenter has been declared at his baptism to be the beloved son of God, ‘with whom I am well pleased.’

A sensible choice here (any good marketing team would say) is to build on the buzz, and get to action. But Jesus chooses retreat and isolation as his next step. He chooses to follow the Spirit’s direction not the popularity route and ‘Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.’ (Spoiler alert if you’re reading ‘Rings and Wardrobes’ but later this week, one of the reflections points out that one of the reasons that Jesus went in the desert, was to spend some time in nature!)

He chooses 40 days of wilderness & fasting: 40 days of small and persistent decisions to choose prayer, to stay away from comfort, to not forage for food. 40 days of small and tough choices which lead him to increasing extreme weakness. ‘he was famished’ is a translation. For forty days, each he chooses how he will respond to the external conditions and the internal calling.

The Big Three Choices

And then we get the big three choices, that are the focus of this passage:

The devil (also known as the tempter) steps into Jesus’ weakness and vulnerability and give three choices:

• #1 Use your divine power to meet your human need – feed yourself – you know you can.
• #2 Test your Father’s care for you – fling yourself off this temple – and see if he’ll rescue you
• #3 Take a short cut to establishing authority – bow down a worship me

Each one is appealing, but Jesus chooses ‘no’ each time.

The Reasons for these Choices.

So what were the reasons behind these choices? Was it simply to offer us a role model of how we should behave in tough times? 

Digging into the layers behind the actions, you begin to see that this is not simply a role model in action who we need to emulate, but a redeemer in action who we need to lean on. It striking to see the depth of security, understanding and purpose that Jesus displays in his responses. Despite being physically weak and vulnerable, he is secure in his identity as God’s beloved, his use of Scripture is anchored in a deep understanding of God, and he has a purpose and mission that does not simply involve saying ‘no’ to the devil but in time involved the total defeat of the evil.

Jesus chooses to obey the Spirits leading of the desert, because it is part of his saving work for the world. Salvation that links past and future, by actions in the present wilderness. 

• Jesus is identifying himself with Adam and Eve- when faced with the tempters voice – he response is very different. Jesus is establishing himself as the second Adam
• Jesus is also identifying himself with the Israelites – who God led into the wilderness for 40 years. Moses reminds the people of Israel that the purpose of their wilderness time was 'to humble you, and test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep the Lord’s commands’ (Deuteronomy 8). Jesus shows himself to the true Israel, for in his wilderness time, he does not fail.
• Jesus is preparing for the sacrifice of the cross – when he will defeat the power of sin and death. He can do this because he was without sin. And in this early, direct confrontation with temptation and evil, the rules of engagement are established and the true authority is shown. Jesus leaves sinless.

And so Jesus establishes himself as worthy – worthy to save us, worthy to empathise with us, worthy to be our redeemer. And thus it can be said, 'For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.' Hebrews 4:15

Can you see the weight of what was going on in the Wilderness? Do you see what I say ‘we need to see Jesus as our redeemer’ and not primarily as our role model in this!

Shaping Our Understanding of Tough Times.

Yet, there are applications and lessons learnt in this, and they can help shape our perception of tough times.

 #1 The wilderness is not evil. The wilderness for Jesus was NOT evil. It was nature and beauty, and extremes, and scarcity, and hunger and toughness. Yes, he encountered the devil in the wilderness, but the wilderness was not evil.

One thing that adds an interesting dimension is that when Jesus taught his friends and followers to pray: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer. This seems to be the opposite of what happens to Jesus – who was ‘led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil’. I’ve been mulling this over a lot this week. I have not clear cut answers, but I am landing on the theme of this talk – we are not Jesus. He was led into the wilderness for a very particular reason, because he is our redeemer.

We enter times of wilderness, times of scarcity, times of retreat for a whole range of reasons. And the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer would suggest that these wilderness times are not primarily about God leading us into times of testing and confronting evil. Rather they can be for a whole other range of reasons: external circumstances & internal struggles can mean there is a season that feels like a wilderness. -

 #2 Not all choices are encounters with evil. It is said we make two mistakes: to over-state the work of evil in the world. And to under-estimate it. A balance is needed in how we view evil, and discernment comes through a life lived in turning and returning to Christ’s way.

But crucially here – we need to note that not all tough decisions are clear cut choices of – against evil or for evil. Some choices are not even about ‘one right answer’ with all the rest being wrong. It’s why I often will talk about wise decisions rather than the right or wrong decisions. Some choices are simply tough.

 #3 Tough choices also need to be made in the whirlwind of the world, and not just the scarcity of the desert (and Jesus DOES model really healthy responses through his three years of ministry. In looking at the wilderness time, we are looking at a specific, distinct time of Jesus' life. Most of his life and ministry was spent in the whirlwind of life. Which is where we spend a lot of our time. Jesus also faced tough choices, challenges and temptation in the whirlwind, and so we need to look at how he responded in these situations, to learn lessons of healthy responses in stress (I would heartily recommend a brilliant and wise book called 'Jesus, Stress and Glory' by Wanda Nash if you want to find out more))

So there are applications to life within the wilderness challenge faced by Jesus, but I don't think it's simply about seeing a role model.     

See Jesus! He is our redeemer

It’s Jesus who did battle with evil, and has won. He has the right to redeem us, the strength to restore us, the experience to understand us.

So we turn, and re-turn to Jesus. Who has tasted pain, hunger, vulnerability. Who has shown He is the stronger one. Evil, the devil, temptation, have not won.

So maybe we can lean on him, before we try to copy him. We can talk to him about our struggles, and not just try to get better. 

We reclaim the authority he has, in the face of the weaknesses we have.

See Jesus, Lean on Jesus.