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      Jesus came to the wilderness of the last season—a season that stretched hundreds of years back, to the point when time began. All of a sudden there was a fullness of time. All righteousness had been fulfilled. Jesus connected the last season of mankind to the season waiting in the future. The heavens opened and God spoke, and everyone there recognized that the season had ended. A new anointing came down upon Yeshua to lead us into the next season of repentance.

     Jesus had to be affirmed as Messiah; He had to be affirmed as a different move of God. And that’s what leads us up to the wilderness temptation. The wilderness temptation is not like other temptations. The wilderness temptation in your life is not the same as a normal temptation you go through. A lot of people don’t think like this.

     Jesus had been tempted since the day He was born. He wasn’t the boy in the bubble. He was tempted when He was twelve years old when His parents wanted Him to pull out of what He was forming. He was tempted as a man. But this wilderness temptation when He was thirty years old was different from anything He’d experienced before because the wilderness temptation represented His new season that He was now leading in.

     The wilderness temptation that Jesus went through was a greater type of confrontation than He had ever experienced, because a whole new season hinged on that temptation. That’s why the warfare was different. He had to connect worlds. He needed to connect two worlds in this temptation. He was connecting a physical world with a spiritual world that was a new, divine connection. Heaven and Earth connected in a different way. In a wilderness temptation, we’re not just prophesying to prophesy, and we’re not teaching just to teach. Rather, we are in a different moment in a history of the manifestation of the word. There is this divine connecting of worlds, and that’s why the temptation is greater.

     Once Jesus made it through this temptation, He needed to return to last season’s structure and look face-to-face at those who watched Him grow up. He had to go back to Nazareth, to the synagogue, and face off in the place He’d been going all those years. The very people who had been worshiping with Him in the last season needed to face off with who He was in the new season. Did you recognize this is what was happening? He had to go back to the same synagogue He grew up in and face them off in the new He came through. And in doing that, He cast a demon out of the synagogue leader! This is the reality of our wilderness temptation. In this wilderness temptation, certain things are so important for us to understand. First of all, these were not internal temptations Jesus faced. He’d been dealing with that for thirty years. We must get to a point where the enemy is not able to affect us with all our internal issues. These weren’t internal issues that Jesus was facing.

     The purpose of any temptation is to gain an advantage over you and to put an upper hand over your land; you are tempted so an upper hand can get over your land. But there’s a level of temptation that is linked to your destiny. That is why the Lord has a certain grace for you when you’re going through all your childish schemes, before you’ve put away your youthful desires. Some people grow old with some besetting sin still in operation that they should have gotten rid of by the time they were twenty-six. We must get past those internal issues, because there is a greater spiritual world out there that God wants to use us in. Jesus’s temptation was linked with the original intent of Father for His life.

     Those temptations were coming to connect with the inward, original intent that He was to accomplish in His future. Those temptations were not attacking Jesus the man but Jesus the Messiah, because seasons had shifted. There will be corporate temptations for a church, business, ministry, and family until that work reaches the true identity that God intended. The enemy intends these temptations to prevent a full identity from manifesting. You must get to a place of maturity where you display who you are and are used to change or influence the culture you are positioned in for your future.

     There are levels and degrees of temptation. Unlike Peter, who went back to an old vocation after failing in his moment of trial, Jesus did not return to being a carpenter. With Jesus, the temptation was against His future destiny and identity as Messiah. He was no longer a carpenter; He was God as man, who would resist and redeem man. There are times that Satan will come against you to stop you from manifesting who you will be in the future. You have to recognize this plot every time you make a shift to a new place. You have to ask yourself, “Why am I going through this here?” It’s because your destiny will now be seen in a new way in a new place.

     Jesus’s temptations were designed to tempt Him so He would not be the head of a new movement. He was not being tempted over the old, fallen race. He was being tempted in a whole new movement of a redeemed people who were going to take dominion in a new way. The temptations were to stop God’s redemptive plan for mankind. They were to break the power of the anointing that had come from heaven when heaven opened. All of a sudden these wilderness temptations were contending with the voice that had entered the earth and commissioned the next level of redemption for mankind. These temptations were not contending with Jesus’s last thirty years. Rather, there was contention because heaven had opened up and a new anointing had come down on Him like a dove. The Spirit was now leading a new movement, so hell had to attempt to keep an upper hand over mankind. Every time you get a new anointing, hell will contend against you.

     Now let’s look at the power of the tempter and how he works against us in a new season as opposed to an old season. First of all, he realized Jesus was in a famished condition. He was tired. He was hungry. He had pressed through one season, and now He was in the wilderness, led by the Spirit, with a new anointing that had come on Him—but without any sustenance. When this happened to the children of Israel, they murmured. Jesus withstood.

     Satan must find the right moment to take advantage of you before your identity reflects your future. Jesus needed to redeem what the serpent did to entice Adam, the old man. The new man is already working, but Satan went back to Adam, the old man, and tried his oldest method on Him. He said, “Are You . . . ?” He needed to put doubt in Jesus’s mind, because when the heavens opened, the Word that came upon Him was, “You are My beloved Son.”

     Satan had to ask Him, “Are You really that? Are You really that which was said about You? Have you really shifted Your identity from the last season to this season? Are we really in a new dimension? Is heaven really connecting?” The tempter’s oldest method was used first—but it failed.

     He then attempted to incite Jesus to be dissatisfied. He does the same things with us and tries to make us dissatisfied with our new place. Some might say, “We were doing good. Why are you trying to change things?” In a new season, we must learn to be satisfied in our new place. We must see new manifestations of God’s glory. We must move forward in a new way, but Satan will do whatever he can to stop us. One of his strategies is to say, “I have to make you dissatisfied with this new place you’re in, and I have to make you impatient to try to get out of it sooner than God’s going to get you out of it.”

     Satan said to Jesus, “I’m going to use Your self-will to try to tell You some good things that will get You out of this place sooner. Why should You be denying yourself? Why don’t You go eat something? Why are You going through all this? You’ve already been called Messiah.”

      Jesus basically said, “I’m in a wilderness place because the Spirit put Me there. I’m going to deny Myself in this wilderness place until Father tells Me differently. I am going to stay here until I come forth with power. I am going to stay here until every temptation known to man has been resisted. Only Father knows when I have completed My time here. I can trust Him to keep Me here until I have fulfilled this assignment.”

The tempter said, “Why don’t You eat something? You’ll be better off in here if You just eat.” Jesus resisted by taking the Word of God. Satan also used the Word of God. It’s the height of a religious force. Jesus had to use the Word of God to counteract the Word of God that Satan was using. That’s how religion hangs on for dear life. Jesus resisted by going to Deuteronomy 8:3 and using that Word against the enemy.

     The second temptation the enemy presents was based upon Jesus’s call. Here’s the subtlety of what the enemy does. Jesus came to redeem the kingdoms of the world, so Satan tried to take His call and offer it to Him out of time. “Let me give You this thing more quickly.” In other words, “Let me show You a way to compromise for You to take dominion. You don’t want to go through the process of all that warfare to take dominion in that thing God’s promised You. I can show You some shortcuts!” What Yeshua does is to use Deuteronomy 6:13 (author’s paraphrase): “Fear the Lord with all your heart and take your oaths in His name.” The Word in the wilderness is an overcoming key to neutralize any strategy of vexation. I actually think this was the greatest of all His temptations, because the greatest of any temptation is going to be against your destined call. To accomplish your call, you will have to learn how to use the Word.

     Remember when Jesus called Peter the name of Satan. Peter was attempting to divert the Lord from going to Jerusalem to meet His captors. When that voice of enticement is coming into your mind and heart, no matter the source, you must equate the voice to your adversary, Satan.

     Here is another incredible temptation, and this is where your demise can come. Satan tempted Jesus to put God to a test. God tells us that we can test Him. In Malachi He said, “If you’ll give, I’ll prove Myself to you.” God still says, “You can put Me to the test by giving, like I gave with My Son.” But what Satan was attempting to do was produce the height of presumption. Everything being said was right, but it was not in God’s timing. He was using the Word to justify this temptation. But Jesus usedDeuteronomy 6:16 and rebuked the tempter. In your wilderness, the Lord will get you to a place where you rebuke your tempter.

     These temptations were categories of temptations that will affect each one of us throughout our lives. However, there is nothing that we will face in any wilderness season that was not confronted by our Lord in His forty-day period of testing. He came through triumphantly. So can you!

     Notice this: “Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region” (Luke 4:14). One of the first places He returned to was Nazareth. There He displayed His new identity to those He loved and had grown with the longest. Nazareth rejected His new identity. They could recognize His goodness, perhaps even His prophetic ability, but because of familiarity, they could not see Him as Messiah. Many who are determined to stay in an old wineskin never embrace those who move into the new.

     In this new season, you can be new, look new, and operate with new authority. Let every wilderness place work to empower you. Trust God to keep you there until you have heard the word clearly. Trust Him to empower you so that when you leave, you will overcome every obstacle in your path ahead.