Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
After looking at the ministry of John the Baptist, then the temptation of Jesus, we are left with only five other references to 'desert' in the Gospels...and four of them are in John, and three of those four are historical references:
"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." -- John 3:14-15
This is a reference to Numbers 21, when the people complained about their wandering, so that the Lord infested their camp with venomous snakes. The people repented of their complaining (Num. 21:7), which was a first amongst all the times they had complained, so God instructed Moses to fashion a snake of bronze and display it upon a pole in the camp...and healed anyone who looked at the snake. Weird, huh? Well, there's some reasoning for that. The custom of the day was to hang the body of a defeated king on a pole or tree, as a display to prove that he and his army had been utterly defeated and there was a new authority in town. Hanging a body on a tree was a sign of complete dominance by the victor. By putting the snake on the pole, Moses was declaring God's victory over the snakes and the people basically just had to exercise enough faith to go and look at the defeated thing in order to be healed.
The crux of the analogy, though, isn't that Jesus is going to be defeated. Jesus was going to take on the sin of the entire world, and take it to the tree. It was the sin that he would carry, willingly, that was being displayed as defeated. He defeated sin by carrying it to the cross and hanging it there, in his person, to show his power over it.
That's a really abstract comparison and one of those weird things that makes no sense...unless it is, in fact, the truth. For comparison, look at 2 Cor 5: 21..."God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (emphasis mine). God put the sin of the world on Jesus...who took it to the cross and hung it there as a sign of victory over it.
But Jesus made that reference in a private conversation with Nicodemus. The Jewish leaders themselves brought up the next reference.
So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' " John 6:30-31
Jesus' miraculous sign was, of course, his resurrection. You can't get a bigger 'miraculous sign' than coming back from the dead. But Jesus had a different point to make about bread.
"I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." - John 6:48-51
This really freaked out the folks at that time, who thought Jesus was talking about cannibalism. But that was kind of his point...he wasn't talking about living bread keeping alive a physical human any more than he meant living water would keep a person from needing to drink H20. He was talking about the spirit of a person. He lost a lot of followers (people who were literally following him from place to place to hear his teaching, not social media followers, lol) over that concept because they just couldn't make the transition from physical to spiritual and were repelled at the idea of eating his flesh. But he is the Word...and it is entirely possible to consume the Word by diligently studying it so that it becomes a part of our thoughts, attitudes and actions...just as consuming bread turns the bread into bone, teeth, muscle, energy, etc that makes up our physical body.
These two comparisons are just a hint at the way the events of the Old Testament foreshadow Jesus. God didn't waste anything; nothing was random. From the snakes that afflicted them to the miraculous food that they ate daily, it all displayed an aspect of Jesus.
Later in John, after Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead (hello, miraculous sign, anybody?) the Jewish leaders were determined to silence this upstart preacher before the Romans decided he was enough reason to remove the limited authority they had over their people and replace them with direct Roman rule (see John 11:48).
So from that day on they plotted to take his life. Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead, he withdrew to a region near the desert, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples. -- John 11:53-54
I don't know how long Jesus stayed there, but that was his last quiet interlude before he went to Bethany and was anointed by Mary at Simon the Leper's house. The next day he rode into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey...what we call Palm Sunday.
Once he rode to Jerusalem, he pretty much stayed there, sleeping out in the open on the Mount of Olives (maybe even in Gethsemane?) for the last few days of his ministry. He went to the temple each day, answering his religious critics and teaching the people. But one evening, after they had returned to their spot on the hill, his disciples asked him privately about the end times. Jesus replied with what is known as the 'Olivet Discourse' and is recorded in Matthew chapters 24 - 25, mentioning the desert in one bit:
"For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect -- if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, 'There is he is, out in the desert, ' or 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." -- Matt, 24:24-27
In this case, 'desert' is used as a contrast to 'inner room'...from one end of the spectrum to the other, he will be reported to come just to those who are in the appointed place; a few people, maybe, might see him. But, Jesus says there will not be any doubt about it, and no one will have to travel to some specified place. When he returns...the whole world will know it.
I can't even imagine what that will be like.
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