Gen 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3: 18-22; Mk 1:12-15
There are many famous treaties made between the countries. The Treaty of Verdun, (August 843) was a treaty between the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne, which divided the Carlingian Empire into three kingdoms. It ended the three year long Carolingian Civil War. The Thirty Years' War was ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster in 1494. World War I Ended With the Treaty of Versailles June 28, 1919. The Antarctic Treaty and
related agreements, collectively called the Antarctic Treaty System or ATS, regulate international relations with respect to Antarctica.In the Biblical age such treaties were known as covenants. There were
covenants between individuals, between families, between villages, between
tribes, between nations and between God and men. Breaking the covenant was
considered disgraceful. People went to the great extremes for making heroic
sacrifices to honour their covenant.
In the regions where Abraham lived, tribes signed agreements in a
peculiar way: they would kill various animals, cut them into halves, and put
half on one side and half on the other, leaving a space, a kind of path between
the two. The parties who established the agreement would walk between the
halves of the animals killed. The walking between the halves of the animals
amounted to saying, “Let it happen to me what has happened to these animals if
I do not keep my word.” The book of Genesis tells us that God walked between
the halves of the animals he had ordered Abraham to kill.
In all the covenants that God had established with his people there was
a sign. In the covenant with Noah the sign was the rainbow. In the covenant
with Abraham the sign was the circumcision and in the new covenant of Jesus it
was the forgiveness of sins.
Though people made the covenant with God in good intention to keep it,
they were always tempted to break it. In Jesus life, too, He has experienced
the temptation to give up his covenant.
The Gospel says that Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. Forty
days is a phrase which is not to be taken literally. The number
forty is found frequently in scripture to signify either a time of penitential
preparation, or a time of punishment and affliction sent from God. The Old
Testament is replete with examples of the use of forty: God punished mankind by
sending a flood over the earth that lasted forty days and forty nights (Gen
7:12); the people of Nineveh repented with forty days of fasting when Jonah
preached the destruction of Nineveh (Jonah 3:4); Moses and the Hebrew people
wandered in the desert for forty years (Num 14:34); the Prophet Ezekiel had to
lie on his right side for forty days as a figure of the siege that was to bring
Jerusalem to destruction (Ez 4:6); the Prophet Elijah fasted and prayed on
Mount Horeb for forty days (1 Kings 19:8); and, Moses fasted forty days and
forty nights while on Mt. Sinai (Ex 34:28).
In the New
Testament we find Our Lord fasting and praying for forty days and forty nights
in the desert in preparation for the public ministry that would end in his
redeeming death (Luke 5:35). He is the new Adam who overcomes the temptations
of the devil and remains faithful to God; the new Israel, who reveals himself
as God’s Servant by his total obedience to the divine will, in contrast to
those who provoked God in the desert.
Mark’s brief
story of the Temptation finishes with two vivid touches.
Firstly, the
beasts were his companions. In the desert there roamed the leopard, the bear,
the wild boar and the jackal. This adds to the grim terror of the scene. But as
for Jesus, it is a lovely thing. Amid the dream of the golden age when the
Messiah would come, the Jews dreamed of a day when the enmity between man and
the beasts would no longer exist. Hosea prophesied “I will make for you a
covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and
the creeping things of the ground.” (Hosea 2:18). In Jesus fast in the desert,
we see the picture of beasts recognizing, before men did, their friend and
their king.
Man in
prayer was always respected even by nature. The great rishis of India, spent
years in the heart of the nature. Neither beasts nor the forces of nature dared
to disturb them. When we are determined to struggle to resist the temptations,
nature and the whole creation will be at our side to empower us and to
strengthen us. But, what is required is that the first step, the decision, the
willingness should come from our side.
Over temptation is actually a two-part process.
First, there is the choice you make at the actual time of the temptation.
Second, there is the preparation done before you are tempted. It is our
failures in the preparation stage that make it more difficult for us to resist
our temptations. Preparing ahead of time provides us the tools and strength to
help us overcome the temptations.
After his famous expedition to the South Pole, Admiral Richard E. Byrd was riding on a train. A man came up to him and asked, "What did you miss the most down at the South Pole?” Byrd answered that they missed a lot of things. Some of them they didn't mind missing, and others they did; some they were very glad to get away from. He said he was discussing that very thing in the middle of the six months long Polar night with one of the Irishmen in the camp, Jack O'Brien. Byrd asked, "Jack, what are you missing most from civilization?" Jack answered without any hesitation, "Temptation." Temptation is a very real part of life: temptation to stray from the values we hold dear, temptation to take short cuts, to avoid struggle, to find the easy way through.
No sooner was the glory of the honour of Baptism was over than there
came the battle of the temptations in the life of Jesus. The great lesson it
imparts is that we cannot miss temptations. In this life it is impossible to
escape the assault of temptations. But, temptations are sent to us not to make
us fall; they are sent to strengthen us. They are not meant for our ruin, but
for our good. They are meant to be tests from which we emerge better warriors
of God.
While God allows us to experience temptations, He
never gives us more of these than we can bear. He will give us means to
overcome our sinful habits with His guidance and grace through prayer.
Secondly, Mark says that the Angels were helping
him. There are ever the divine reinforcements in the hour of trial. Jesus was
not alone to fight his battle. Neither are we. We are always supported by God
and Men, when we begin our battle.