BEHIND THE APPLE – Jesus’ Temptation and Testing in the Wilderness.
Adrian Lowe
One of the most famous of the paintings depicting the scene of Adam and Eve’s temptation to eat of the fruit forbidden by God, is by Lucas Cranach the Elder and is displayed in the Courtauld Gallery. Like most other painters through the centuries, Cranach depicts the picking and eating of the forbidden fruit by Adam and Eve as an Apple. The Apple looked so good and promised so much that they just couldn’t resist it.
Was it an ‘Apple’ that Adam and Eve just couldn’t resist? A Pink Lady perhaps or a huge Braeburn? Or for those of you with a taste for something a bit sharper, a Granny Smith’s maybe? The Apple of course is merely a symbol that speaks of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. This story, told for generations in a huge range of different ways and mediums hasn’t lost its power or significance. However for us to understand this story we have to get behind the Apple and discover what led Adam and Eve to reach out, take a hold of the fruit, pluck it from the tree and eat it. How did they get from walking with the Creator one day to hiding in fear and shame the next? We have to look behind the Apple; we have to understand the temptation more fully, to get to grips with how they ended up becoming orphans.
Thousands of years later, Jesus faces the exact same ‘Apple’ as the Holy Spirit leads Him into the wilderness. The story, written so carefully by Luke in chapter four of his gospel, throws much light on what happened in the Garden of Eden many years before. We get a glimpse of what is behind the decision to eat of the ‘Apple’. There are three principle roots of all sin (disobedience) carefully annotated by Luke in his account of Jesus testing.
A couple of thousand years on, we too are regularly faced by some great looking ‘Apples’. Understanding what leads us to be tempted to take a hold of the fruit, pluck it from the tree and eat it will help us to win our battle in conquering sin. You see, behind every obvious sin is a less obvious temptation! Satan appeals to our old sinful nature and appetites. Over the next four weeks we will expose the work of the enemy of our souls and look at what this passage can teach us about these three appetites!